How big companies innovate? Implement Design thinking in your business.

The information era has allowed prominent companies to reach vast recognition and outstanding success in the global market. However, sustaining momentum and relevance is incredibly difficult, especially when the competition is also hungry for a piece of the market.

Big companies keep their competitive advantage by constantly innovating. But how exactly do they do it? And what can smaller and upcoming companies learn from their examples?

Innovation as a process

A common misconception is that innovation is mostly done in a lab where a few employees gather and put their thinking hats on until they come up with something brilliant. In reality, innovation is powered by all employees. Encouraged by top management and embedded in the company culture. It is simply a constant inclination toward improvement — a shared state of mind.

Understanding that innovation requires both examples and encouragement, is key to shaping a culture around it. If we look at companies like Amazon, Apple and Tesla, we can see that the leader in each one of them was the master innovator. Not only in the sense that they were creative geniuses, but also that they inspired the same behaviour in others.

Idea generation through teamwork

Innovation ultimately leads back to the inclusion of multiple perspectives. This is why big companies preach the importance of teamwork. They organizing their employees in multidisciplinary groups.

However, there are potent issues to this arrangement. The phenomenon of groupthink, where one dominant individual makes others suppress their ideas, along with the equally as common case of collectively getting off track and losing focus on the goal, are only a few of the potential hiccups.

Big companies tackle these issues through the use of tools and tactics. They use them to enable inclusion and efficiency in generating and sharing ideas. The tools and tactics they use are part of a methodology which serves as their secret weapon, a methodology known as Design Thinking.

It is all about speed and delivery — Design Thinking method

The six-step process of Design Thinking doesn’t only salve issues in teamwork. It also enables the teams to work significantly faster in finding solutions. And after that eventually testing them to see how they can be improved even further. In the race to the customer, the winner is not the company that has a superior product. The winner is one that actually delivers it before its competitors.

This is why big companies love Design Thinking. It helps you in overcoming the common issues in the creative process and guides the innovators to the best solution. It also significantly shortens the time from ideation to product launch, giving a major competitive advantage to the brand.

What can Design Thinking do for your company?

Design Thinking can be used in big or small companies, in all industries and markets, internally or through outside contractors. It is universal because it uses empathy for the final user as a guiding principle in product development, leading to a solution most suited for the market in question.

The methodology is a really a collection of practical tools which lead the team through the different stages of the innovation process. It was used in the creation of the first ever computer mouse for Apple, the keyless Tesla Model S car, and practically everything in Amazon’s shopping experience.

You can also create products and services with big market potential, with the aid of this proven methodology. Follow the examples of these and countless other big companies and implement Design Thinking in your Business Development strategy today.