IBM and Design Thinking
Fast Company hosted a huge Innovation Festival this past November in NYC and I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to participate. It was a five day event that included site visits to innovative companies all over NYC.
One of my favorite site visits was the Design Camp session at IBM. The session was led by their internal Design Thinking education and activation team and was a great window into how IBM has embraced design thinking in all aspects of their business. A fun perk for session participants was receiving a copy of the IBM Design Thinking Field Guide. It is a great resource on design thinking and includes activities that you can facilitate with your own team. Definitely a must-download!
At Clearworks, we promote design thinking, especially in our innovation work. One of my personal favorite activities to introduce the concept of design thinking to folks is the Stanford’s D.School Crash Course. Given my love for design thinking it was cool to see a huge company like IBM embrace it. The New York Times recently published an article on Phil Gilbert, a key player in IBM’s design thinking initiative, and his work and goals at IBM- IBM’s Design-Centered Strategy to Set Free the Squares . It is a great read!
Design thinking has applications in all types of businesses. Reach out if you want to chat about how you can introduce design thinking to your team!
Sara Dougherty
sara@clearworks.net
