Design Thinking in the Workplace

Abstract

Companies worldwide are expected to be highly innovative, responsive, and proactive in today's dynamic business environment. Management strategies that are merely based on specific tools and techniques are likely to be overrun by new advancements. Hence, management strategies must be shifted from being entirely operative to creative. Recently, design thinking has gained popularity in the business world, and the utilization of design thinking in managing projects is believed to enhance creativity and innovation. Design thinking is a non-linear approach and a set of tools used to generate innovative solutions to problems by having a deep understanding of customers' needs. Various researchers claim that design thinking can address challenging business problems, improve the quality of generated ideas, reduce the risk of failure, improve adaptability, and increase organizational innovativeness. However, the topic is relatively new, and there is limited quantitative empirical evidence on the variables that impact the willingness of companies to adopt a design thinking approach and on the effectiveness of design thinking in ensuring project success. This work fills the gap in research by providing a literature review and a thorough study and analysis of variables that impact design thinking adoption in the workplace. The main objective of this research is to identify critical factors that impact design thinking adoption. The benefits, challenges and barriers were assessed using structural equation modeling. Moreover, the effectiveness of using design thinking to ensure project success was studied by presenting a case study of one of the top 25 Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) companies in the Middle East. The results indicate that the perceived benefits of design thinking positively impact design thinking adoption, however, the perceived challenges and barriers do not impact design thinking adoption. Furthermore, adopting a design thinking approach can positively impact project success.