Innovation & Design Thinking: Understanding the Design Mindset

This report examines the design thinking mindset as a critical discipline for understanding client needs and driving innovation in business, particularly within entrepreneurship education. It highlights how designers are leveraging technology to enhance their design thinking, emphasizing that design thinking is an action-oriented approach focused on creating future innovations. The report underscores the user-centric and flexible nature of design thinking, making it valuable for businesses seeking to innovate products and services. It also addresses the importance of incorporating design mindset in business and engineering education to equip future employees with the skills to identify effective business strategies and mitigate cognitive biases, ultimately fostering innovation and growth. The document references several academic sources to support its analysis of design thinking and its impact on organizational success.

Design thinking mindset
Introduction
Design thinking mindset is a discipline
which expresses proper understanding
of the needs or requirements of the
clients. Based on which the designers
or planners actually design products or
process. This is the method for solving
various complicated issues that the
companies in this global context face
regarding their products or services.
The designers in this recent context
have been utilizing technology at its
best and mingling these with their
design thinking mindset to product the
best quality product. However, design
thinking is not a solution focused
theme rather an action oriented one
that takes the designers to create new
things in the future. DT mindset can be
described as a factor that brings out
the sensibility, reasoning and intuition
of the designers so that they can
identify the most potent business
strategy to benefit both the company as
well as the customers.
Entrepreneurship
education in building
design
The research by Daniel (2016)
has revealed that every
entrepreneurship education has
been incorporating design
thinking method in their system
as many small and medium size
corporations are utilizing this
same method to bring varieties
in their operation and
production. The author has
collected evidence from surveys
from undergraduate students of
business education to know
whether building design
mindset has any effect on the
economic growth. The result
however, supports the findings
of the author that the students
with design mindset are more
efficient to handle any project in
their future companies.
Why is DT so useful?
According to Liedtka (2015), design thinking mindset is
completely different from other types of thinking. This is
more user-centric as well as flexible than other methods.
This is the reason why it is remarkable and acceptable
towards the innovation of both products as well as services.
To this author, DT does not follow any particular pathway
but depends on the individual creativity that ultimately leads
to achieve innovation in the organization. To this author,
design thinking is not just an innovation process but also
helps in the problem-solving process. Hence the
organizations get a proper pathway to move towards growth.
Schweitzer et al. (2016) have found out that no
company in this competitive world can survive
without applying innovation in their process but
there are some company constraints that
prevent the employees to utilize their creativity
in the process or production. In this respect,
designing mindset thinking is the best way to
judge the intuition and capability of the
employees.
DT in decision making
To Khanduja, Bihola and Dave (2017), it
is mandatory for the business and
engineering students to learn about the
method of growing design mindset. This is
due to the fact that the all the innovation
programs largely depend on the proper
understanding of the requirements of the
customer which these future employees
actually cater.
Design thinking mindset helps the
decision-makers in limiting all the
cognitive biases for introducing
innovation. As the structured approach
focuses on the designs rather than the
abstract thoughts, thinking of mind
becomes imaginative that actually
encourages innovation.
• Howard, Z., Senova, M., & Melles, G. (2015). Exploring the role of mindset in design thinking: Implications for capability development
and practice. Journal of Design, Business & Society, 1(2), 183-202. doi:10.1386/dbs.1.2.183_1
• Schweitzer, J., Groeger, L., & Sobel, L. (2016). The design thinking mindset: An assessment of what we know and what we see in
practice. Journal of Design, Business & Society, 2(1), 71-94. doi:10.1386/dbs.2.1.71_1
• Khanduja, G. S., Bihola, K., & Dave, J. (2017). Infusing design thinking mindset in engineering education—A pioneering step towards
excellence and sustainability. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, 66, 1017-1026. doi:10.1007/978-981-10-3521-0_86
• Daniel, A. D. (2016). Fostering an entrepreneurial mindset by using a design thinking approach in entrepreneurship
education. Industry and Higher Education, 30(3), 215-223. doi:10.1177/0950422216653195
• Liedtka, J. (2015). Perspective: Linking design thinking with innovation outcomes through cognitive bias reduction. Journal of Product
Innovation Management, 32(6), 925-938.