Idea Feedback: Design Thinking for Solopreneurs
Problem
Fortune 500 companies have been using Design Thinking as an innovation methodology for years now for one simple reason: it works. As one example, McKinsey found integrating design thinking led to 33% higher revenues and 56% higher returns in companies that embraced design thinking (https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-design/our-insights/the-business-value-of-design)
But without a dedicated training budget, the demonstrated benefits of Design Thinking are unavailable to small business owners and solopreneuers. This prevents them from innovating efficiently and growing faster.
Solution
Some kind of community around design thinking specifically targeted at solopreneurs, indie hackers, and SaaS entreprenuers.
I've spent the last few years working with Fortune 500 companies, running workshops and building Design Thinking training programs for the thousands of corporate workers. Being a former soloprenuer myself (6 years running a digital agency), I'm considering building a course/tools to help smaller companies innovate like big companies.
Questions
How many people here have heard of/are interested in Design Thinking? Have you tried learning about it yourself? If so, how'd that go? If not, would you be interested in learning more?
Obviously, my idea is too rough/unclear for proper roasting, but I wanted to get an initial sense of energy around the subject.
And if you're curious about Design Thinking, I'd love to give you a 1-to-1 intro to the subject for free. On a 30 minute call, we can talk about your problems, I can suggest resources, approaches, methods, and other specifics that might help you overcome your challenges.
Isn't the common wisdom that large companies aren't innovative? (innovators dilemma, the reason why acquisitions happen, etc)
Feels weird to say "lets take stuff the big guys use at scale (that maybe works?) and bring it down to work with bootstrappers."
I just looked it up and looks like some generic framework... there's dozens of these.
For me personally I just don't think it's as relevant for solo entrepreneurs as simply getting out there and doing it.
I suppose it depends on how you define innovation - I like the idea of defining it as "the creation of value for human beings." Indeed its difficult for incumbents to create disruptive innovation, as per the Innovator's Dilemma, but large companies are quite good at continously improving and creating new value. Not as a rule, of course, but if they lacked that ability they wouldn't be large for very long haha.
That said, I appreciate your feedback and you taking the time to respond. I think there's significant value in Design Thinking relative to other generic frameworks, but indeed on first glance it looks like most other methodologies.
The difference is entirely in how you "get out there and do it". I think DT provides structure and a specific toolset that has been proven to add value.
But given that this post was largely about the public perception of DT, your comment is super helpful, even if I disagree with it personally.
Hi @KashD, I have used design thinking in my consulting days and it is certainly a helpful tool for reverse engineering solutions. As you said, this can be hard to apply to small businesses and solopreneurs.
The way I see it, conducting customer interviews and finding out what problem your ideal customer is facing is as similar approach as solopreneurs can manage.
Of course, design thinking is more detailed and intricate than this, but most early stage entrepreneurs don't have the capacity and resources to conduct large design thinking initiatives. What do you think?
Thanks for the thoughtful respond @Gordon! Indeed, the cycle of interviewing + persona creation is key to success in any company, regardless of size.
I also agree that there's little in the way of capacity to run larger DT initiatives. My thought is that there is an opportunity to equip people with specific skills (and tangible agendas for meetings, brainstorming sessions, etc) that enable them to use the best practices even if they can't get the scale.
For example, there are a number of useful Design methods related to problem framing. My feeling is that this is a step in the process solopreneurs overlook, or at least under-invest in. Another example would be ideation, where entreprenuers tend to approach based on instinct and gut feel (I'm certainly guilty of that myself), Even in the world of research, many entreprenuers stop at interviews, without appreciating the vast world of design research tools, many of which allow them to get more value out of an interview. Finally, that step 5 you mention - pulling out the insights from the data - is such a difficult step to do without some structure, which I think Design Thinking can help provide.
In short: I believe (and know from experience) that DT can offer value even to those with a $0 budget by providing step-by-step instructions for how to better explore problems, conduct research, and generate creative solutions. There are of course other valuable elements of DT (e.g. prototyping, user testing), but those tend to require either more budget or larger teams that an entreprenuer might not have access to.
Nice @KashD. I look forward to seeing how you package some of these tools up for entrepreneurs to utilize.
There is definitely value to be had and insights to be gained with a little bit more structure when trying to organize qualitative data from the likes of interviews.
Best of luck with it all.
Cheers, thanks Gordon! hope to have things to share here on indiehackers in the near future
Hi Kash,
I was previously exposed to Design Thinking methodology at a FTSE 100 company that I worked for. I consider some of the tools and techniques I learned during that time invaluable (especially exercises around ideation), and will continue to use them even now that I have left that job.
Most of the time we would use the process and associated tools / exercises in a group context. I would bring my team through design thinking processes regularly, and we would also occasionally run workshops with other parts of the business to help them generate solutions to problems they were having (whether customer-facing or internal).
All I have to offer you is some personal insight / experience.
When I left that job, one of the ideas I had was to build a tool to support the design thinking process. The problem that I observed was, in a big company, often these "innovation" style workshops are all for show. You have a bunch of senior people come together, experience what it's like to be creative and think up solutions, stick a bunch of post it notes on the wall, network with each other, agree that "innovation is important" after which everyone returns to the way they have always done things.
Or you have a bunch of junior people come together, come up with some amazing solutions... that will never, ever receive buy-in from senior levels as they have their own agendas and pet projects already in motion.
So the challenge was... can a tool solve this?
I loosely ideated that there may be a need for a tool that:
I figured that any large company with an innovation team and an innovation budget would be the target customer for this. Frankly I think innovation teams at large companies often have such an unspecific mandate that anything you can give them to help put a framework around what they should be doing, is useful.
So I thought offering a ~$100k per year tool that defines a sort of bare-minimum level of activities that a whole team uses to drive their innovation work, is a good thing. Sort of like project management software for things before they become actual projects.
It never occurred to me that this tool would be useful to solopreneurs though. I'm not sure why. I think all an individual needs to implement design thinking in their life is to read a book and try some exercises. I think where tools are needed to move this along, is where you have more people involved, in a team / company context.
Hope that wasn't too much of a ramble!
Not a ramble at all! Appreciate you sharing that experience.
First: can't tell you how many times I've seen the same things you've mentioned. "Innovation Theater" is all too common - get a whiteboard, get a few post its, and we've "done innovation". It would be comical if it wasn't so frustrating.
I think your ideas are super interesting - I've been thinking about building a tool around Design Sprints specifically myself. Capturing post-its digitally is covered now by some great tools (The "Post-It App" is great on iOS for this), tracking implementation is definitely a trickier one (JIRA? Asana?) and measuring the ROI has got to be the toughest nut to crack. I know at least a half dozen companies that would pay $$$ for a solution to that last problem alone.
May I ask why you didn't end up pursuing these ideas or projects?
Well as I mentioned in the reply, the idea I had was more aimed at innovation teams at large orgs. I could see there was some sort of need (having worked in a large org, closely with the innovation team) but ultimately decided not to pursue the idea as:
The sales problem is certainly the most difficult. I spent the last three years doing biz dev for a small company in exactly this space, and it was at least a 6 months sales cycle. That said, the budgets were there and substantial. Of course, without a strong product vision its tough to get anything off the ground, so sounds like a smart play.
I appreciate the 'well designed' (😉) article. Seriously, though, I believe design alone is why companies like Apple are valued the way they are. They dominate design.
Definitely agree! As someone once attributed to Steve Jobs (though who knows who actually said it): "Design isn't just how it looks, its how it works." No one is better than apple at ensuring their products are designed to work, from top to bottom.