Abstract
This essay frames design thinking (DT) as a form of experiential learning and describes what we, as DT educators, have come to consider its “shadow side.” We are concerned that, through uncritical promotion of instrumentalist approaches to creativity, DT classes unwittingly marginalize from the curriculum other forms of creativity, such as those that are rebellious and self-expressive. By drawing on existing critiques of the dominant creativity discourse, we explore what a more critically oriented approach to DT might look like.
Keywords
Introduction
Design thinking (DT), which is an approach to problem solving and innovation that advocates for business people navigating “management problems as designers approach design problems” (Dunne & Martin, 2006, p. 512), increasingly is being taught within business schools (Benson & Dresdow, 2014; Lancione & Clegg, 2014; Zidulka, Davenport, & Low, 2015). DT’s appeal lies in its potential to foster students’ creative competence; improve their ability in interdisciplinary collaboration; hone their skills at “developing possibilities, rather than satisfying constraints” (Welsh & Dehler, 2013, p. 773); and, more generally, prepare them to succeed in an increasingly complex environment (Efeoglu, Møller, Sérié, & Boer, 2013; Rauth, Köppen, Jobst, & Meinel, 2010).
This article’s coauthors both teach DT-focused business-school courses, which employ many of the pedagogical strategies that have been described in the education-focused DT literature (Dunne & Martin, 2006; Glen, Suciu, & Baughn, 2014; Liedtka & Ogilvie, 2011; Razouk & Shute, 2012). In general, we have seen our students realize many of the benefits described in the literature, such as abilities in applying iterative decision making, reframing problems in more imaginative ways, and finding new sources of value creation (Glen et al., 2014). However, we also have come to ask questions around DT’s framing of creativity in instrumentalist terms, as a resource to be used in service of better meeting business needs, which we perceive as its “shadow side.” Specifically, we question whether, in teaching DT, we are unwittingly marginalizing other, less instrumental forms of creativity, such as creativity for the purpose of self-exploration and creativity that calls into question relationships of power and domination, which we also believe have a place in our classrooms.
This article briefly introduces DT as a form of experiential learning and discusses our own approach to teaching it. It then summarizes from the literature critical perspectives on instrumentalist creativity and discusses their applicability to DT education. The article ends with suggestions for how to mitigate DT’s shadow side.
Design Thinking as Experiential Learning
From a management perspective, DT represents a process, a strategy and a mindset. As a process, DT is human-centered and apt for solving complex, ill-structured problems. As a strategy, it contributes to organizational renewal, brand building, and sustainable competitiveness (Brown, 2008; Martin, 2009), and as a mindset, it has come to represent the idea that through empathy, iteration, optimism, embracing ambiguity, and learning from failure anyone can be creative (IDEO.org, 2015, p.19). There are many different versions of the DT process, for example, that of Stanford d.school is composed of the steps Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test (Stanford, 2010) and that of Liedtka and Ogilvie (2011) of What is? What if?, What wows? and What works?. All emphasize the need to begin any design challenge by deeply empathizing with those for whom you are designing, as well as the necessity of using visual methods and developing solutions through iterative prototyping (Glen et al., 2014; Zidulka et al., 2015).
DT can be seen as a form of and as a way to support experiential learning. Its principles and processes resonate with Kolb’s (1984) widely applied model of experiential learning (Glen et al., 2014). Experiential learning as described by Kolb (1984) is “the process whereby knowledge is created through transformation of experience” (p. 41). Kolb’s model is often portrayed as a cycle where the learner goes through a highly recursive four-stage process of experiencing, reflecting, thinking, and acting (Kolb & Kolb, 2005). DT education typically is project based (Beckman & Barry, 2007; Orlandi, 2010), where the experience takes center stage as the “source of learning” (Kolb, 2014) and where knowledge is developed “in the service of action” (Romme, 2003), often outside of the traditional physical boundaries of lectures, and class room learning (Kolb, 2014). The DT process includes experiential phases such as active experimentation, concrete experience, reflective observation, and abstract conceptualization (Glen et al., 2014; Orlandi, 2010). During ideation and prototyping, students have the opportunity to realize immediate results and to actively experience idea development and experimentation (Deutschmann & Botts, 2015). Students also revisit earlier phases of the DT process based on feedback from their actions and reflections (Beckman & Barry, 2007).
Multiple scholars have written about courses and programs focusing on DT as an approach to experiential education (Çeviker-Çınar, Mura, & Demirbağ-Kaplan, 2017; Deutschmann & Botts, 2015; Stock, Bucar, & Vokoun, 2017; Welsh & Dehler, 2013). Furthermore, various schools have developed experiential initiatives focused on DT. For example, Stanford University’s d.school (Stanford, 2013) and MIT’s Office of Experiential Learning and D-Lab (MIT Office of Experiential Learning, n.d.) invite students to tackle real world innovation challenges and, through experience, learn the mindset and tools of DT. In the past 7 years, we ourselves have integrated various DT processes into our classes at our institution. Typically, at the start of our courses students are provided with a real-world “design challenge,” provided by a local organization. Students are then guided through a process in which they work to deeply understand stakeholders and iteratively develop solutions.
Cooptation of Creativity
Interest in DT can be contextualized within a broader preoccupation, in the field of management, with the topics of creativity and innovation. In the past two decades, creativity and innovation have come to be linked with productivity, competitive advantage, increased profit, success, and even organizational survival (Blomberg, 2014; Puccio & Cabra, 2010; Zhou & Shalley, 2009). Creativity, which within the management literature, is commonly described as involving the production of ideas that are “novel and useful” (Amabile, 1996, p. 1), has come to be valued as a key ingredient for innovation, which involves those ideas’ implementation (Amabile, 1991). DT, which provides step-by-step guidelines for navigating the creative process, can be understood as a way for practitioners to operationalize this desire for creativity and innovation. By putting forward a path to innovation that hinges on the collective efforts of diverse team members, DT can also be understood as a means to counter the “heroic, lone-genius” (Liedtka, 2014, p. 44) myth of creativity, which suggests that only certain, special individuals are innovators (Brown, 2008; Liedtka, 2014; Welsh & Dehler, 2013).
However, as the literature on creativity and innovation has grown, so too has a parallel but smaller body of writing, which critiques it (Blomberg, 2014; De Cock, Rehn, & Berry, 2013; Driver, 2008; Fouweather & Bosma, 2015; Gahan, Minahan, & Glow, 2017; Glăveanu, 2018; Lancione & Clegg, 2015; Osborne, 2003; Prichard, 2002; M. A. Taylor & Callahan, 2005). According to critics, the dominant literature can be faulted for its adoption of an overly narrow definition of creativity, which frames it as a resource to be exploited for organizationally useful purposes, without acknowledging the many noninstrumentalist ways it has been defined throughout history and across disciplines (Blomberg, 2014; Gahan et al., 2017; Prichard, 2002; M. A. Taylor & Callahan, 2005). As these thinkers have noted, outside of the management discourse, creativity is commonly associated not with the productive achievement of organizational ends, but with what is wild, romantic, rebellious, cathartic, impulsive, useless and bizarre (Blomberg, 2014; Fouweather & Bosma, 2015; M. A. Taylor & Callahan, 2005). Channeling creativity toward useful ends is not necessarily problematic, in itself. Rather, as explained by Blomberg (2016), the problem lies in the emergence of a hegemonic discourse, which “limits the possible meanings and representations that ‘creativity’ has . . . [while] excluding many meanings of creativity encountered in other discourses (p. 4). According to Blomberg (2016), the risk of adopting a hegemonic view of creativity, which “favor[s] the kind of creativity which is useful, valuable and can be harnessed for productivity . . . [and] fits the managerial agenda,” (p. 4) lies in the potential to “wash out any risky, seemingly useless, or negative aspects of creativity” (p. 4).
A shadow side of what we do as DT educators thus lies in the risk that our classes will contribute to squeezing other, equally important forms of creativity out of the curriculum. We are particularly concerned about two forms of creativity that are not currently sufficiently addressed: (1) creativity for the purpose of self-exploration and (2) creativity that disrupts relationships of power and domination.
What’s Lost (1): Creativity for the Purpose of Self-Exploration
In reflecting on the limitations of DT’s framing of creativity, it is useful to look toward the arguments put forward by proponents of arts-based methods within the context of leadership development (Adler, 2006; Purg & Sutherland, 2017; Sutherland, 2013), since they serve as a relevant counterpoint. Both arts-based and DT educators seek to foster creativity within the business curriculum and both use methods borrowed from the creative disciplines, such as visual art, drama, and creative writing. In the DT context, students are commonly asked to participate in visualization activities like sketching, storytelling, and building sculptural prototypes of ideas (Lewrick, Link, & Leifer, 2018; Welsh & Dehler, 2013). Indeed, to casual visitors, an arts-based leadership class would likely resemble one in DT, since in both, students would be engaged in similar creative arts-based activities.
However, arts-based approaches differ from DT in their rationale, with arts-based educators valuing creative exploration for its potential to convey “meaning” and “afford reflection, conversation, and challenge the meanings and purposes to what we do” (Purg & Sutherland, 2017, p. 382). Other reasons for including arts-based learning in the curriculum include the potential to provoke “catharsis through creating artistic products” (Sutherland, 2013, p. 27) and to promote questioning of “who we are as human beings” (Adler, 2006, p. 497). The emphasis is thus on creative expression for the purpose of personal enrichment, self-understanding, and even spiritual exploration (Adler, 2006; Gahan et al., 2007; Purg & Sutherland, 2017; Sutherland, 2013). Although advocates of arts-based approaches often link creativity to desirable organizational outcomes, such as the ability to navigate ambiguous complex business environments (Adler, 2006; S. S. Taylor & Ladkin, 2014; Sutherland & Jelinek, 2015), they frame these outcomes’ development as beginning with aesthetic experience and self-expression.
In contrast, DT positions arts-based approaches as a means to better come to and communicate useful insights and ideas. For instance, Liedtka and Ogilvie (2011) positioned visualization as a means for “identifying, organizing, and communicating in ways that access ‘right brain’ thinking,” “simplifying team collaboration,” and “generat[ing]excitement for new ideas” (p. 22). Glen et al. (2014) noted that “sketches, models and prototypes clarify the characteristics of the idea and make it more amenable to critical consideration and feedback (p. 658). While students can develop personal creativity and engage in meaning making through DT activities, the primary focus rests in creating something useful for others and not expressing one’s self.
Interestingly, DT’s focus on usefulness—and downplaying of self-exploration—can be linked to its seemingly wholly laudable emphasis on empathizing with users. It is difficult to argue with the value in advocating, as DT does, for business people working to understand “customers as real people with real problems, not seeing them as targets for sales” (Liedtka & Ogilvie, 2011, p. 6). However, DT’s focus on empathic research also has a shadow side. For one, beginning the creative process by fostering an understanding of others’ needs means shifting creative exploration away from personal meaning making and toward ensuring its usefulness to others. Moreover, thinkers like Koppen and Meinel (2012) have expressed concern that DT’s framing of empathy represents a “commodification of the authentic” (p. 48), whereby it becomes just another low-risk way to gain customer intelligence. While a full exploration of empathy’s shadow side is beyond the scope of this paper, interested readers might refer to Sosa’s (2015) “Beyond ‘Design Thinking,’” which expressed concern that DT’s conceptualization of empathy risks objectifying others and “relegat[ing] people as data providers, test subjects, and passive audiences” (Sosa, 2015, p. 2937).
In reflecting on our own experiences, we acknowledge that we do not create space for students to explore those forms of creativity that are rooted in self-exploration and that might supplement the DT curriculum. For example, while our students engage in seemingly artistic activities, such as creating storyboards, visual methods are a means to articulate and iterate useful ideas and not a source of self-exploration.
What’s Lost (2): Creativity That Disrupts the Status Quo
A productivity-focused definition of creativity stands in contrast to what has been termed the “rebellion view” (M. A. Taylor & Callahan, 2005), which conceptualizes the creative person as someone who is the “enemy of convention” (M. A. Taylor & Callahan, 2005, p. 252). To elucidate this perspective, Prichard (2002) used the example of D. H. Lawrence, who saw it as the job of the creative person to “take a knife to . . . the simulacrum” that others assume to be reality (Lawrence, 1955 as cited in Prichard, 2002, p. 269). He contrasted Laurence’s view with that advanced within the management discourse, where “creativity is not bizarre or destructive” and “to be known as ‘creativity’ at all it must . . . be socially appropriate and oriented toward (particularly business) objectives” (Prichard, 2002, pp. 269-270). The imperative that, within the realm of management, creativity remain nonthreatening is well stated by Driver (2008), who noted that “creativity discourses stress that all assumptions can and should be questioned except the assumption that creativity must be performative” (p. 187).
Critics have noted how the dominant managerial creativity discourse can be understood to position as liberatory that which is, in fact, exploitative (Beckett & Hager, 2005; Blomberg, 2014; Gahan et al., 2007). While IDEO’s Kelley brothers link the development of creative confidence to the potential to “feel passion, purpose, and meaning” in one’s work (Kelley & Kelley, 2013, p. 154), more skeptical thinkers have noted the degree to which the cult of creativity operates as a tool of managerial control (Gahan et al., 2007). As noted by Gahan et al. (2007), “The rhetoric around creativity is very attractive to business; after all it underwrites an ethos of individualism and self-direction, and seems to hold out the promise of transforming the mundane nature of work into something exciting and intrinsically valuable” (p. 46). A productivity-oriented framing of creativity thus turns the more rebellion-focused one on its head, so that the creative person becomes not a critic of convention but the ideal employee, someone who is “self-reliant, entrepreneurial, yet loyal” (Beckett & Hager, 2005, p. 75). In Gahan et al.’s (2007) words, “creativity within organisations has been pathologised as the perfect employee: highly committed, flexible, curious, persistent” (p. 44). This is also evident in the DT discourse, where the design thinker is someone who is likely to be more productive and engaged (Kolko, 2015). Companies like IBM and Deloitte support this rhetoric by illustrating the positive correlation between employee performance, financial results and the prevalence of design thinking (Bersin, Solow, & Wakefield, 2016; IBM, 2018).
As business school educators, we do not take issue with helping our students develop skills to succeed in the labor market. However, we believe that university education is not only about enabling workplace success and feel aligned with those educators who perceive that part of business-school education should involve “question[ing] and challeng[ing] existing structures and practices” (Reynolds & Vince, 2004, p. 444) and working to transform, rather than replicate, exploitative power relationships (Reynolds & Vince, 2004). Perhaps here lies the true promise of DT, in its ability to break down formal hierarchies by providing a means for individuals to participate in a collaborative creative process where the “group product” makes it virtually impossible to identify individual contributions (Welsh & Dehler, 2013, p. 785). However, while DT represents a counterpoint to outdated, individualistic notions of creativity, we contend it still advances the dominant managerial discourse, positioning creativity as that which serves the status quo.
Interestingly, having students work with external clients—something that is often positioned, even by critical educators, as being a “good” pedagogical strategy (Welsh & Dehler, 2013)—can further fuel this lack of critical questioning. While introducing external clients offers multiple benefits (Glen et al., 2014; Welsh & Dehler, 2013), it also puts pressure on both students and instructors to please them. This can be particularly problematic within a DT class, because learning how to be creative takes time and often requires learning from failure (Kupp, Anderson, & Reckhenrich, 2017). Focusing too soon on helping clients meet their business goals can thus limit students’ exposure to riskier and more radical forms of creative exploration.
As business school educators we would like our students to be sufficiently critical that, when called upon to be creative, they question what underlying values and interests are being served. However, we have not yet found ways to guide students in meaningfully navigating the power dynamic between the client and themselves or in questioning whether and how a client’s goals resonate with their own values. While DT is hailed as a new way of reframing problems, it typically does so in service of better solving the problem—as opposed to questioning the value system from which the problem arose.
Mitigating the Shadow Side
We offer the following suggestions for how educators might adapt their teaching of DT to address the concerns elaborated above:
Acknowledging to students how DT frames creativity. It is easy to imagine a student who is intensely creative, for example, as a visual artist, and yet goes unrecognized as such within the realm of DT, due to an inability to channel this creativity toward “novel and useful” (Amabile, 1996, p. 1) outcomes. This is not, in itself, problematic, since one class cannot be all things to all people, and as noted above, it is expected that a business education will offer instrumentally focused skills. However, clear articulation of what form of creativity is being promoted would mitigate the risk of this student leaving the class believing he or she is not “creative.”
Being strategic about when and how to bring in external clients. Instructors should preserve blocks of time that are not client focused so that students have opportunity to explore more radical forms of creativity. Also, instructors could try to find clients who are open to working with students in more developmental ways.
Overtly discussing critical perspectives. Because DT explicitly encourages students to explore alternative framings of problems and generate novels ideas, DT classes would appear to offer a unique opportunity to bring in perspectives that challenge the status quo. However, it is unlikely that students will raise critical perspectives, without prompting or introduction, so instructors who want to encourage greater criticality could explicitly discuss this intention. Also useful would be reflective exercises, in which students consider how to channel their creativity in ways that align with their values.
Allocating more time in the curriculum to DT. Given the steep learning curve students navigate in learning DT, simply introducing them to the basic skills can easily occupy a full semester. Consequently, implementing many of our suggestions likely would require that more time be allocated to DT. Ideally, an introductory DT class would be followed by disciplinary classes, for instance in Marketing and Entrepreneurship, which employed DT.
Conclusion
This essay explored ways in which adoption of an instrumentally focused definition of creativity within DT classes might lead to the unwitting marginalization of other forms of creativity and offered several strategies to mitigate against this. We hope that this article might play a role in promoting reflective discussion among educators, and we would invite readers to share their own stories about how they have experimented with and adapted design DT.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.