Page 91 - Harvard Business Review, Sep/Oct 2018

you need to start them off with a lot of structure, so they generally are not aware of. Though ostensibly geared to un-
don’t have to think. A lot of what we do is habit, and it’s derstanding and molding the experiences of customers, each
hard to change those habits, but having very clear guardrails design-thinking activity also reshapes the experiences of the
can help us.” innovators themselves in profound ways.
Organized processes keep people on track and curb the ten-
dency to spend too long exploring a problem or to impatiently Customer Discovery
skip ahead. They also instill confidence. Most humans are
driven by a fear of mistakes, so they focus more on preventing Many of the best-known methods of the design-thinking
errors than on seizing opportunities. They opt for inaction discovery process relate to identifying the “job to be done.”
rather than action when a choice risks failure. But there is no Adapted from the fields of ethnography and sociology, these
innovation without action—so psychological safety is essen- methods concentrate on examining what makes for a meaning-
tial. The physical props and highly formatted tools of design ful customer journey rather than on the collection and analysis
thinking deliver that sense of security, helping would-be of data. This exploration entails three sets of activities:
innovators move more assuredly through the discovery of Immersion. Traditionally, customer research has been an
customer needs, idea generation, and idea testing. impersonal exercise. An expert, who may well have preexisting
In most organizations the application of design thinking theories about customer preferences, reviews feedback from
involves seven activities. Each generates a clear output that focus groups, surveys, and, if available, data on current be-
the next activity converts to another output until the organi- havior, and draws inferences about needs. The better the data,
zation arrives at an implementable innovation. But at a deeper the better the inferences. The trouble is, this grounds people
level, something else is happening—something that executives in the already articulated needs that the data reflects. They see

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