DOOMED DESIGN THINKING

Design thinking is the answer to most of the concerns of the modern world whenever faced with the question of resource constraints. In the article, design thinking for social innovation, the process has been creatively described ‘as a system of overlapping spaces rather than a sequence of orderly steps’[1]. Each of the three spaces overlap in such a manner where they form a logical association while retaining independence at each of the respective space. This arrangement gives each of the space the necessary freedom to add value to the purpose.

In my experience of working with two international development organizations in Pakistan with a large stakeholder base that included the Governments of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, I have found that a lot of resources are invested in the inspiration and ideation phase especially when public welfare projects are being funded by the international donor agencies. A lot of emphasis is put on generating the objective(s) while taking on board a diverse group of stakeholders. This group is then supported by a set of expensive consultants, who are specialists in their domain, to refine the objective, outputs and propose action plans. These two process are what my newly acquired vocabulary would put as inspiration and ideation.

Despite the tremendous investment on the above two spaces, where creative approaches to problem-at-hand are translated into radical solutions, most of these efforts fail due to poor implementation. Reasons behind such failures in a multi-stakeholder platform range from budgetary pressure to spend allocated funds, time limitation for limited field testing, donor driven agenda, non-alignment of priorities, absence of operational accountability and most importantly the absence of leadership amongst institutional stakeholders.

These scenarios are deeply disappointing when poor implementation results in non-fulfillment of program objectives for the large population at the center of the problem.

---

[1] Brown, Tim, Wyatt, Jocelyn. “Design Thinking for Social Innovation”.  Stanford Social Innovation Review. 2010. Website visited on 08 Sept 2015