Ideo: the Organization and Management Innovation in a Design Firm and the Role of Alliances and Collaboration

The Roll of a Technical Workstream Lead I have served our Country in the armed forces for more than a dozen years and when I hear the term “technical workstream leader,” a Warrant Officer is the first though that comes to my mind. The army warrant officer definition is “a self-aware and adaptive technical expert, combat leader, trainer, and advisor” (U.S. Army Human Resource Command, 2004). The roll of the warrant officer in the military is being a technical expert, well versed in new technologies, and able to integrate them in support military operations. Warrant officers are technical workstream leaders and, for the last two years, I have been a warrant officer in the US Army.

The core concept behind ‘Design Thinking’ revolves around attaining a goal rather than simply fixing a problem at hand. Since focusing on an objective already helps address any unmet needs, goal-oriented solutions lay the groundwork for other improvements including future ‘Design Thinking’ solutions. As such, solutions of this nature need to be socially fluid, tangible in nature, and broadminded in approach.

To Weygers, innovation was not the culmination of activity, but the activity of life itself. Innovation should be primal – a total mindset, a way of life – that can only be achieved when released from the manacles of fear and convention. Though it cannot be reached without a degree of discomfort and large doses of patience, it is a mindset that allows us to move beyond our losses and look to the horizon in anticipation of the next great notion.

This chapter is aimed at providing a context of the theory of disruptive innovation (DI) an examination of its representation in the academic literature. Section 2.2 explains the history, usage and evolution of the term, including the identification of important articles, authors and themes.

I used speech marks on the phrase “Design Thinking” before entering it on the search engines. The purpose of this is to ensure I discover appropriate information. I have selected the book Design Studies by Catherine Stones published in 2010, The Principles & Purpose of Interactive Design published by Jamie Steane in 2014, as well as, the book Wicked Problems in Design Thinking by Richard Buchanan, 1992. The reason I have carefully chosen these books is due to the reviews, their informative nature and there are different range of published dates. Moreover, Tim Brown discussed Harvard Business Review in 2008 about Design Thinking, as well as, Jon Kolko wrote an article about 20 Design Thinking Comes Of Age and Phil Brown recently discussed Why Design Thinking Conquered The World, research as well as, Steve Lennon discussed about Design Thinking. The text, which is less relevant is the Wicked Problems In Design Thinking as it is quite an old text book. Overall, all these books and sources give applicable information.

In this book the authors provide clearly defined methods and guidelines for creating and sustaining innovation strategies that best fit a specific company. The book covers a lot of topics about innovation from the management’s prospective. It starts from evaluation the innovation state of one company to how to design an innovation strategy while integrating /balancing innovations between technology and business model; it talks about how to manage innovation by fighting organizational antibodies (from bureaucracy to not-invented-here syndrome) and leverage technology to design innovation process; and finally it touches on how

“Innovation is fostered by information gathered from new connections, from insights gained by journeys into other disciplines or places, from active, collegial networks and fluid, open boundaries. Innovation arises from ongoing circles of exchange, where information is not just accumulated or stored, but created. Knowledge is generated anew from connections that weren’t there before” ~Margret J Wheatley

Innovation, design, and creativity are concepts that are closely related. These terms help organizations conceptualize different aspects of how a high performance organization operates. Therefore, by developing a working defining for innovation, design, and creativity, this can help an organization better understand how they might create or strengthen their competitive position. Although these concepts are ubiquitous in the business community, it is commonly the case that they are used without much insight into their actual meanings or how they might apply to different circumstances within an actual organization. This paper will analyze and contrast some of the factors that are implicit in these three important terms.

Design thinking has become a way of problem solving for a wide range of companies. Tim Brown, CEO and President of IDEO, "Design thinking is a human-centred approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” [1]

One of the leaders in the design thinking movement in this context is UNICEF (well-known acronym for the United Nations International Children 's Emergency Fund). UNICEF’s innovation principles have been endorsed or adopted by a multitude of partners, including the USAID, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, WFP, UNDP, IKEA Foundation, UN Foundation, and UNHCR (UNICEF).

Design thinking is a user-centric methodology for identifying the customer 's problem and providing a solution. Although the concept is often applied to a physical product, it is equally valuable when applied to procedures, policies, systems, protocols, employee engagement, marketing communications, customer engagement and virtually all other

There has been an increasing call for more critical thinking in terms how successful the design and marketing

Design thinking is all about the design specific skills that a designer applies during the process of designing, not specifically needing to be a graphic designer as this thought process can be applied to a lot of people in the creative industries such as interior and exterior designers, game designers and even architects. Design thinking has now come to be characterised as fusing the appreciation of other designers and people that can produce beautiful projects and incorporating it into your own work. It’s the imaginative concept and the coherence to figure out the

2) Chesbrough, H., W., (2003). The era of open innovation. MIT Sloan Management Review 44 (3): 35–41.

Design thinking refers to creative and systematic problem solving. For example, at the beginning of the semester we were instructed to create a tower made only out of the materials provided to us, that would not only support the weight of a single marshmallow, but also be the tallest in the class and it had to be able to stand entirely on its own. In order to create the contraption, our groups had to use design thinking. The design thinking process goes through several stages: discover, define, create and evaluate. The process is unique and differs from a traditional stage gate development process because it is not restricted by a definitive order and can be accomplished using the four stages in different orders. Additionally, since the