Strategy by Design

Organizations need to take design thinking seriously. We need to spend more time making people conscious of design thinking -- not because design is wondrous or magical, but simply because by focusing on it, we'll make it better. And that's an imperative for any business, because design thinking is indisputably a catalyst for innovation productivity. That is, it can increase the rate at which you generate good ideas and bring them to market. Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems. When you bring design thinking into that strategic discussion, you join a powerful tool with the purpose of the entire endeavor, which is to grow.

In order to do a better job of developing, communicating, and pursuing a strategy, the head of Ideo says, you need to learn to think like a designer.

In the Masters of Design issue of FastCompany, he enumerates his five-point plan for how to make the leap:
1. Hit the streets
2. Recruit T-shaped people
3. Build to think
4. The prototype tells the story
5. Design is never done