Design thinking
and Lean start-up
10 September 2018
My journey
Mechanical
Engineering
Industrial
design
Product
strategy
Forecasting
Shifts
Software/servicesHardware
Shifts
Software/services
Innovation
Hardware 	
Design
Shifts
Software/services
Innovation
Lean start-up
Hardware 	
Design
Design thinking
Cultural
Business Technology
Meaning
Growth Usability
Upstream
Organisation
and culture
Tools and
processes
Capability
development
Design
research
Market
analysis
Industry
foresight
Vision
and values
Proposition and
concept design
Portfolio
planning
Opportunity
scoping
Strategy
development
Innovation
management
Headline 30pt
‘You can use an eraser
on the drafting table
or a sledge hammer
on the construction site.’
Frank Lloyd Wright
Mobility  Tech
Intro
Design thinking
vs Lean start-up
Blended approach
Wicked problems / user-driven / inter-disciplinary
iterative / prototyping / failing early
Evangelists
Roger Martin
A way of thinking
Tim Brown
Designer’s sensibility and methods
A fluffy concept
Confused distinction
Design
thinking
Design
doing
Confused distinction
Design
thinking
Design
doing
2008
Confused distinction
Design
thinking
Design
doing
2009
New story, old process
Design thinking = Design process
‘design thinking
is a new story, not
a new process.’
	 Bill Moggridge, Designerly Thinking:
	 In conversation with Bill Moggridge, NESTA,
	 12 June 2007
Roger Martin
Analytical
thinking
Intuitive
thinking
50/50
mix
‘The most successful
companies in the
years to come will
balance analytical
mastery and intuitive
originality in a
dynamic interplay.’
Roger Martin, ‘The Design of business’, 2009
Analytical Intuitive
Balanced left and right
brain thinking
Headline 30pt
Designers’ brain
Designers tend lack
analytical rigour
An ill-defined process
Roger Martin
A way of thinking
Tim Brown
Design for non-designers or Designers tacking bigger problems
Headline 30pt
‘Design thinking
is a nonsensical
phrase that
deserves to die’
Don Norman, ‘The Research-Practice Gulf’,
Design Research Conference, 11 May 2010
‘Design Thinking is a failed
experiment ... The success
rate for design thinking
processes was very low’
Bruce Nussbaum, former assistant managing
editor, BusinessWeek in Fastcodesign.com,
June 2011
The Big Re-Think
‘Business leaders
are casting around
for new ideas...
...design thinking
is offering itself
up as one of the
new ideas’
	 Vijay V Vaitheeswaran, ‘The Big Re-Think:
	 redesigning business summit’, 11-12 March 2010
Vijay V Vaitheeswaran, Global Correspondent, The Economist
Headline 30pt
1997–2011
Headline 30pt
WEF 2007–2017
The power of a fluffy idea
Design Strategy
Rise of the CDOs
Jonathan IveErnesto QuinterosEric QuintSean CarneyPeter Schreyer Mauro Porcini
2006 11 12 13 14 15
Designer founders
Bachelor of Fine Arts in industrial design Dual degree of Graphic Design
and Industrial Design at RISD.
Nathan BlecharczykBrian Chesky
Trained as an Architect,
then worked in the design industry.
Bachelor of Architecture
and Industrial Design
Evan Sharp Graham Hill
Bachelor of Arts communications
Eric Ryan
‘Great companies are built with
a design ethos at the core, ...
Understanding that design isn’t
just pixels and paint but an
experience that has been thought
through end-to-end is really
important.’
Megan Quinn, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, in Tim Bradshaw,
‘Designers on the ascendant in Silicon Valley’, Financial Times, 7 July 2013
Designers are
being asked to tackle
higher-level problems
Cultural
Ambiguous
Cross-functional
These problems are:
Intro
Design thinking
vs Lean start-up
Blended approach
‘Remember, if we’re
building something that
nobody wants, it doesn’t
matter if we’re doing it on
time and on budget’
Eric Ries,
Shared origins
User centred design Lean manufacturing	 Agile software development
Iterative learning
Experiment
MeasureLearn
Learn early and often
Time
Experiment
Measure
Learn
Early Alpha	 Beta Test market Launch market
Object
Object
Object
Object
Object
Experiment
Measure
Learn
Experiment
Measure
Learn
Experiment
Measure
Learn
Experiment
Measure
Learn
Common ground
Design thinking and Lean start-up
+ 	Cross-functional teams
+ 	User-focused
+ 	Prototype early and often
+ 	Failing early to de-risk innovation
Common ground
Design thinking and Lean start-up
+ 	Cross-functional teams
+ 	User-focused
+ 	Prototype early and often
+ 	Failing early to de-risk innovation
–	Lack rigorous foresight processes
–	Neither emphasise big idea envisioning
Design thinking
Strengths
– Has created a shared space for designers
and other functions to collaborate in
– Has useful approaches to framing
‘wicked’ or fuzzy problems
– Produces tangible visualisation/artefacts
early in process
– Takes a holistic experiential view
– beyond code
Design thinking
Strengths
– Has created a shared space for designers
and other functions to collaborate in
– Has useful approaches to framing
‘wicked’ or fuzzy problems
– Produces tangible visualisation/artefacts
early in process
– Takes a holistic experiential view
– beyond code
Weaknesses
– Ill-defined process
– Generalises ID process to all problems
– Overemphasis on process
– Strong on Desirability,
weak Viability and Feasibility
– Can become an cross-functional
engagement process, more than
a motor of innovation
Lean start-up
Strengths
– Robust process (including its emphasis
on hypotheses, experiments, and metrics)
– Emphasise on driving business velocity
– Business modelling is central
to the process
Lean start-up
Strengths
– Robust process (including its emphasis
on hypotheses, experiments, and metrics)
– Emphasise on driving business velocity
– Business modelling is central
to the process
Weaknesses
– Focus on making over thinking, best
suited to incremental innovation
in well-framed problem spaces
– While more robust that Design thinking,
there’s still lots of debate over process
–	Assumes core hypothesis exists,
bigger companies need to generate
a pipeline of growth hypotheses
Tailored  blended
approach
Design thinking
Lean start-up
Time
Problem
Fuzzy Framed
Solution
Multi-touch point Software only
Leadership challenge
Process
Context Talent
Process and tools
are only part of the picture
Design thinking
+ Lean start-up Process
Context Talent
Get the right people
on the bus
Process
Talent
Cross-functional
Creative and analytical
Domain knowledge
Collaborative
Leaders setting
the context and vision
Knowledge
Perspective
Analysis
Foresight
Vision
Process
Context Talent
Principles
For early stage innovation
Mix rigour
with creativity
Frame the challenge
… frankly
Walk around
the problem
Envision
in the round
Prototype
and learn
1 2 3 4 5
www.plan.london
We join the dots

Design thinking vs Lean start-up