The curriculum helps marketers find creative solutions and is therefore being introduced in the education sector. Dr Tamal Datta Chaudhuri tells you more
Over the years, marketing tactics have witnessed numerous changes. What was once called a production-oriented era is now referred to as the relationship marketing era. Gone are the days, when marketers believed in the mantra ‘availability and affordability are what the customer wants’. Today, marketers everywhere strive to build a relationship with every single one of their customers. This is why marketers today are so keen on solving problems that allow them to come up with new ideas that organically resonates with their audience. This approach is also known as Design Thinking.
The question here is what exactly is design thinking and how does one go about implementing it?
According to Ceo Leta Stafford, MD at IDEO U, “Design thinking is a process for creative problem-solving”. She divides it into three major elements — empathy, ideation, and experimentation.
The first step to implementing design thinking, empathy, is to put oneself in the shoes of the customer and think from their perspective. This will allow an organisation to gain insights about customers pain points and what they really want. However, an organisation cannot pretend to know the answer all by themselves. They need to reach out to their customers and conduct surveys.
The next step is where ideation comes to play. The world today has immense technological power. Therefore, organisations are in a position to use their insights from step one and the technology available to them, to innovate new solutions to age-old problems. However, targeted ideation is the key to successfully innovating the right solutions. It’s equally important that people have a safe environment where they can share their ideas. Some people like one-on-one discussions, others like bouncing off ideas in a big group, and yet others like to submit their ideas anonymously. It’s vital that an organisation allows for different methods of ideating.
The last step is experimentation. It’s an age-old belief that a product or idea needs to be absolutely perfect before you send it out to the world. Design thinking urges people to take on a more agile approach. This means organisations must let go of older ideas and allow their ideas and creations to be tested out in public.
Design thinking is easy to understand and gets right to the root of why organisations do what they do. Therefore, it’s no surprise that universities around the world have started to train their students in the art of design thinking. Through various activities and projects, students are well versed with implementing design thinking before they set foot into the world of business. This knowledge and skill make them highly sought after professionals by companies known to be innovators. After all, it's common knowledge that the future is for those who can innovate and design thinking is the perfect tool to do so.
The writer is Dean, Calcutta Business School