What is Innovation?
Innovation is difficult to define precisely but for most people it involves “thinking outside the box” and “trying something different” in order to make things better. We might be enhancing a process, a tool, a system or an environment but the bottom line is that we’re not content with the status quo and want to make things better. And so we innovate.
How can we Design for Innovation?
It turns out that there are things we can do to enhance innovation. Over the past fifty years, a process known as Design Thinking has emerged as the dominant framework for ensuring that innovative solutions actually work for real human beings. It puts users at the centre of the process and uses “rapid prototyping and testing” to better understand constraints and evolve towards a promising solution.
Although the exact terms to describe design thinking may vary from author to author, there is more similarity than difference. At IDI, we describe this process in the following way.
Stages in the Design Thinking Process
It all begins with eyes, ears — and heart. Innovators notice when things are not as they should be. They believe that what is, isn’t what must be. And they care enough do dig in and contribute something to the solution. It starts with Why? And quickly moves to Why Not?
![]() Innovators pay attention. They notice what isn’t quite as it should be. And they have hunches about how life could be different. They bring assumptions, beliefs and all sorts of biases with these hunches. But they dig in and use the rest of the process to continually reframe their understanding of the situation. And themselves. |
![]() Empathize and Discover |
![]() Frame the Problem |
![]() Ideate |
![]() Prototype, Test and Evolve |
![]() Archive, Reimagine or Spread |
Never Straightforward
These steps may appear on paper as linear and sequential. But they are not. At each stage we develop greater empathy for the users. As we test our prototypes, we generate new ideas and gain fresh insight into the problem. We may even redefine the problem because of new learning. We go back and forth between the stages, constantly learning, constantly refining, constantly generating – until it is clear that life and learning have been improved for those involved.