At the time of writing Design Thinking is no longer a “new approach”. Among practitioners, as well as academics, interest in the topic has gathered pace over the last two decades. However, opinions are divided over whether Design Thinking as a phenomenon is merely old wine in new bottles, a passing trend, (Liedtka, 2018), or thriving as it is spread to an increasing number of organizations and industries (De Paula et al., 2021; Dunne, 2018; Elsbach & Stigliani, 2018). Despite its growing relevance and the diffusion of Design Thinking, knowledge on the actual status quo in organizations remains scarce.
In 2015, the Hasso-Plattner-Institute (HPI) and the Stanford Design Thinking Research Program conducted one of the most extensive global studies looking into different topics on the current state of Design Thinking practice in organizations (see Schmiedgen et al., 2015). The aim was to better understand what organizations actually do when they claim they practice Design Thinking. Now, we conducted a replicative study to compare the results of the 2015 study with current practices and requirements to analyze the development of six years and outline the future of Design Thinking practices in organizations. It is the first longitudinal study of this scope. Our aim was to determine temporal developments and changes in Design Thinking practices in organizations over the past years. Companies of all sizes and from different parts of the world participated in the survey. The findings from qualitative interviews with experts, i.e., people who have years of knowledge with Design Thinking, were cross-checked with the results from an exploratoryanalysis of the survey data. This analysis uncovers significant differences as well as similarities in how Design Thinking is interpreted and applied in businesses.
Falk is a full professor at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam. Together with his research team, Falk is interested in generalizing human-centered design and Design Thinking for digital innovations in large organizations. Over the last decade, Falk published several books and numerous peer-reviewed articles on the topic. In 2010 he co-founded the SUGAR network for design innovation - the most prominent university network that professionally applies Design Thinking to corporate design challenges.
With ten years of experience in Design Thinking from 100+ workshops/ projects in various industries, such as automotive, financial services, healthcare, ICT, manufacturing, retail, pharma, public, transportation, Stefanie has dealt with this topic from various angles: as a team member, as a coach and a facilitator, as a program design lead, as a full-time Design Thinking leader in the corporate world, as a speaker at conferences and as a researcher. She combines different agile approaches with various topics to enable innovation through human interaction, including strategy, system thinking, team- and leadership, service & product development. For Stefanie, Design Thinking is an exciting field precisely because it is not so easily defined and pigeonholed. Instead, it is constantly evolving and being adapted to its environment.
Danielly is currently a Senior Researcher at the Chair for Design Thinking and Innovation Research at the Hasso-Plattner-Institut at the Universität Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany. She received a master's degree in Computer Science from the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE), Brazil, in 2015, and a Ph.D. degree in Industrial Engineering from the National University of Ireland – Galway (NUIG), Ireland, in 2019. Over the last ten years, Danielly has been conducting research on implementing, measuring, and steering Design Thinking in organizations. She is originally from Recife, Brazil.
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