University Name: Design Thinking for Managers Assignment Report

This report delves into the application of design thinking principles within a managerial context. It begins by defining personal reflection and its role in understanding and interpreting experiences, emphasizing its importance in developing self-awareness and ethical considerations. The report then explores the design thinking process, highlighting the four key phases: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. It emphasizes the significance of personal reflection at each stage, particularly in forming insights, articulating problems, generating ideas, and refining prototypes. References to relevant academic sources are provided to support the arguments, offering a comprehensive overview of how design thinking methodologies can enhance managerial decision-making and innovation. The report underscores the value of incorporating design thinking into sustainable business models and fostering creative solutions.

Running head: DESIGN THINKING FOR MANAGERS
DESIGN THINKING FOR MANAGERS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1DESIGN THINKING FOR MANAGERS
Response to Question 1: Personal Reflection
The opportunity of reviewing feelings and thoughts of specific events through the
implication of new fresh perspective is known as personal reflection. Personal reflection can
be in different forms including, blog posts and essays. The functionality of personal reflection
is used for presenting personal opinion regarding a specific topic or situation (Travers,
Morisano and Locke 2015). The main purpose of personal reflection activity is to utilize a
platform for reflecting upon an experience with the content on extracted learnings from the
situation. The significance of self-reflection is the process of developing self-awareness,
increases integrity while reflecting on the learnings and core values (Travers, Morisano and
Locke 2015). Personal reflection helps in identifying the series of unconscious reaction for a
particular situation and develops the importance of keeping an open mind while a position to
create an impact over a situation.
Response to Question: Importance of Personal Reflection in design thinking
There are four phases of implementing design thinking, empathize, define, ideate,
prototype and test (Carlgren, Rauth and Elmquist 2016). The first phase involves interaction
and involvement with the entities and situations that can be impacted through design solution,
which requires the application of personal reflection (Lehmann et al. 2015). In the first step
the process of forming an insight will involve the implication of personal reflection. In the
second step, the articulation of the experienced interactions with a fresh mind-set will be
presented for defining identified problem. The ideation process will also involve the
application of personal reflection on the experienced situation and perceiving the situation
from different perspective (Chasanidou, Gasparini and Lee 2015). The prototyping and
testing phase involves the application of the actual personal reflection articulation by utilizing
the understanding/learnings developed from the personal reflection.

2DESIGN THINKING FOR MANAGERS
References:
Carlgren, L., Rauth, I. and Elmquist, M., 2016. Framing design thinking: The concept in idea
and enactment. Creativity and Innovation Management, 25(1), pp.38-57.
Chasanidou, D., Gasparini, A.A. and Lee, E., 2015, August. Design thinking methods and
tools for innovation. In International Conference of Design, User Experience, and Usability
(pp. 12-23). Springer, Cham.
Lehmann, M., Bocken, N.M.P., Steingrímsson, J.G. and Evans, S., 2015, April. Incorporating
design thinking into sustainable business modelling. In Proceedings of the 2nd International
Conference on Sustainable, Seville, Spain (pp. 12-14).
Travers, C.J., Morisano, D. and Locke, E.A., 2015. Self‐reflection, growth goals, and
academic outcomes: A qualitative study. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 85(2),
pp.224-241.