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Knowing. Making. Doing.
As I said in my book The Designful Company, if you want to innovate, you have to design. Yet design is a foreign language to most business managers. This is because the principles of traditional business management principles evolved to serve the needs of the industrial age. They rely on a mechanical two-step process for making decisions: knowing and doing. You “know” something—from a past experience, a case study, or a best practice—and then you “do” something.
The problem with this process is that what you “know” is limited to either “what is” or “what was,” while innovation is all about “what could be.” It’s impossible to know what could be without the process of design. To generate new ideas, the design process inserts a middle step: making.
Through the act of prototyping—using sketches, models, maps, mockups, simulations—the “making” step puts options on the table that weren’t there before. It pushes back on what we think we know, and also changes what we’re likely to do. It shifts the emphasis from “deciding” the future to “designing” the future. In a business climate that requires perpetual innovation, industrial-age thinking is useful, but woefully inadequate. We also need design thinking.Here’s a simple pair of slides you can throw into your presentations when you build a case for a more innovative culture. Download slides.
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It is a designful visualization of adding abductive reasoning to the dominant deductive+inductive reasonings mix!
It is a designful visualization of adding abductive reasoning into the dominant deductive+inductive reasonings mix.
[...] Liquid Agency Brand Exchange Knowing. Making. Doing. [...]
This is a perfect distillation of a concept that grabbed me from a previous AIGA conference. I think it was Milton Glaser who said (I wish I had taken better notes) that designers, by nature of their education and creative abilities, ARE “UNIQUELY POSITIONED” to fill that space that exists between a company/product/service and ingesting it with life.
Excellent, simple illustration Marty. Thanks for sharing.
2 thoughts on this concept.
1) Like you said, it seems many conservative business practitioners believe effective decisions should be based on ‘what was’. This mindset could be hard for a MBA to get away from – as the MBA was in itself a safe bet based on previous career successors. And so ironically, although business leaders are encouraged to innovate many are primed to make decisions based on ‘what was’.
2) One might replace the second example from ‘Know’ to ‘Think’ to suggest looking at a problem critically or in a new way. OR somehow shifting the definition of ‘Know’ in the second instance to be about uncovering the real problem so that teams can more accurately ‘Make’ or design solutions for the future.
[...] always liked the way Marty Neumeier thinks. For decades I can say that. He thinks first – designs second. The way it should be. [...]
Marty,
Your one of the most inspirational people I have come across…
And I am old
Many thanks
Ernst
Hey there,
As always, your words are inspiring. Even as a college student working my way up in the world, I strive to implement “designful thinking” into different processes.
However, I was wondering if you have written any material that helps lower-level individuals convince upper management to start thinking with more of the make philosophy?
P.S. – LOVE YOUR BOOKS!!
Marty I told you so. You are my guru.
your books are being sold and read everywhere in Brazil. I am proud to have been part of that success when I did the reviews and directions to the publisher.
An excellent way to explain what we do as designers. Our job is to make things simple for business types.
thanks for making it simple.
cheers grant in toronto
Just to add to your awesome concept, Marty, here are some interesting references on the subject: The Design of Business by Roger Martin, Dean of Rotman School of Business, University of Toronto (http://tinyurl.com/39q76s3). Bruce Mau, the incredible designer also has a synergistic philosophy of Change through Design. Here is a quote from one of his interviews: Design is the method by which we change things,” he says. “So if you’re thinking about changing things, you’re going to use a design method or it’s going to be accidental. Accidental may or may not be helpful, but design certainly will be. Design is about making things exactly as you want them.”
[...] start. The author of Zag, The Brand Gap, and The Designful Company will be sending out another Steal this Idea, an idea you can steal, next [...]
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[...] Neumeier’s Knowing, Making, Doing (here the making is the [...]