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Design thinking enables the move away from planbased management into discovery-driven innovation and leadership .
Laura Klein has a great take on three rules of innovation :
1 . Start with the problem , not the solution .
2 . Kill bad ideas quickly and cheaply .
3 . Build good ideas iteratively .
That ’ s interesting , it is becoming difficult to separate product and service innovation as more products are adding services to their offerings , and more services are extending their brands through products . We have a similar situation emerging with social innovation . As we bring in factors like sustainability and the ability to address wicked problems that affect our society , there is a blurring of business , government and social innovation .
ML : Indeed this is part of the dynamic of the new reality . The things we need to address are evolving themselves and the speed at which they are evolving in is surpassing our ability to create solutions for them with our institutions . We need to change the way the public service operates and delivers services .
We also hear a lot recently about the concept of Design Thinking . The idea breaks away from traditional business planning and traditional government planning . Now , this concept makes a lot of sense when producing products and so on , but how would design thinking apply to government ?
ML : First of all , you have to contextualize design thinking into to a broader sense of entrepreneurship . The acceptance and application of design thinking principles is really a hallmark of the revolution that is going on in entrepreneurship . Design thinking enables the move away from plan-based management into discovery-driven innovation and leadership .
This idea of the importance of business plans , where you are thinking through every detail before you make a move , ultimately leads to the notion that you can prevent negative things from happening . Discovery-based approaches accept that you are working with unknowns – which mean you can ’ t play the game with the same rules that apply to a known business . When doing something that is new , it is better to make use of design thinking principles such as deep customer insight , prototyping of ideas and iterative development .
Design thinking ultimately minimizes the burn rate for new initiatives and focuses on what is really the core currency of entrepreneurship and innovation which is validated learning . In the context of innovation , failure is not a bad thing . Finding out what works and what doesn ’ t is part of the validated learning process .
But how does this work in government ?
ML : Well , again this is part of the cultural change that is needed . Although the public sector has tried to move to risk management rather than risk aversion , it has not really permeated the culture . There is a massive fear of negative press and a desire for absolute control . For example , there was a recent article on the use of Twitter in government which mentioned a particular government agency that has a 12-step process to approve a tweet . This reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how social communications works today .
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