Getting the right design or getting the design right: an observation of 18 industry projects progressing through a structured design thinking process

Harvard business professor Theodore Levitt once said “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill, they want to buy a quarterinch hole” This quote, often used by design thinking promoters, re-prioritises human needs in place of traditional market data. This has the effect of repositioning design thinking from ‘supplying a solution’ for a defined problem to ‘serving a need’ to an open ended problem. Here, design thinking takes the role of a strategic driver at the front end of innovation processes. By this emphasis design offers its full potential, where one can identify a problems root cause and work towards ‘the right design’.