Thomas Edison created the electric lightbulb and then wrapped an entire industry around it. The lightbulb is most often thought of as his signature invention, but he understood that the bulb was little more than a parlour trick without a system of electric power generation and transmission to make it truly useful. So he created that, too.

His genius lay in his ability to conceive a fully developed marketplace, not simply a discrete device. He could see how people would want to use what he made, and he engineered towards that insight.

He wasn’t always prescient – he originally believed that the phonograph would be used mainly as a business machine for recording and playing dictation – but he invariably gave great consideration to his users’ needs and preferences.

Edison’s approach was an early example of what is now called “design thinking”. This is a way of thinking that teams innovation with an understanding of what people want and need in their lives. It’s a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically and commercially feasible. This approach has much to offer a business world in which most management ideas and best practices are freely available to be copied and exploited. Leaders now look to innovation as a principal source of differentiation and competitive advantage; they would do well to incorporate design thinking into all phases of the process.

Historically, design has been a downstream step in the development process – the point where designers who have played no role in the earlier innovation come along and put a lovely wrapper around an idea. This approach has stimulated market growth in many areas by making new products and technology aesthetically attractive and therefore more desirable to consumers.

However, companies are now creating dramatic new forms of value by asking designers to come up with ideas that meet consumers’ needs and desires rather than packaging ideas developed by someone else. This is particularly important as the world shifts from industrial manufacturing to knowledge-based work. Design’s objectives are no longer physical products; they are also new sorts of processes, services, entertainments and ways of collaborating. These are exactly the kinds of human-centred activities in which design thinking can make a decisive difference.

As more of our basic needs are met, we increasingly expect sophisticated and emotionally satisfying experiences. These experiences will not be simple products. They will be complex combinations of products, services, spaces and information. They will be the way we get educated, the way we are entertained, the ways we stay healthy, the ways we share and communicate. Design thinking is a tool for imagining these things as well as giving them a desirable form.

This is an extract from Design Thinking, by Tim Brown, first published in Harvard Business Review (June). hbr.org

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