Capturing the Kodak moment.
Have you heard this phrase? It is synonymous to capturing the picture perfect moment for posterity. But where is Kodak now? Did they fail to see upcoming trends in digital photography – till it was too late? Interestingly, they did see the trend. In fact, Kodak invented the first digital camera in 1975! But, just as many large corporations, Kodak believed in its ‘Brand’ and stuck to its lucrative film business fearing that diverging into an upcoming trend (digital) would hurt its cash cow. In other words, the behemoth doubted the opportunity of going digital. It failed to question the status quo.

Why did this happen?
Roger Martin, in his book ‘The Design of Business’, states that a definite business requirement for organizations to thrive is to constantly innovate. As organizations grow they are overwhelmed with a multitude of intersections across sales, human resource, production, logistics, and every associated activity across multiple geographies, they tend to progress down the funnel from Heuristics to Algorithm. While that removes mystery and makes processes repeatable, they also need to innovate to be in the race – even if this exercise is outside the scope of day-to-day company activity.

And this, as history shows, is where Kodak failed. They algorithmized the film business, but did not pay attention to explore new opportunities while Sony and Canon overtook them in a seemingly unrelated development. Kodak failed to exploit their investment in developing the first digital camera and making it market ready.

One of the most popular examples of a business that leveraged Design Thinking is McDonalds. The story is pretty well known, and hence is not repeated here. . But what is interesting to note is that McDonalds also became complacent when the likes of Subway came in with their trend of ‘healthy eating’.

Business and Design Thinking
Design Thinking goes beyond algorithm. It is all about the experience and the value that a brand promises. Value truly manifests only when serious attempt is made to understand what the user wants, what the user feels and to empathize with the user. Do product makers and service providers do this? Do they listen and observe?

The Gillette India’ story
The year was 2008. Gillette had launched a new shaving razor for the Indian market, the Gillette Guard. Carefully researched and designed exclusively for the Indian man, it was cheap and yet offered the perfect shave. However, the razor mysteriously bombed in the Indian market.

Why?
The Gillette design team took into consideration hair density and other physiological features. As the product was meant for the Indian market, during the prototype phase, they requested Indian students studying at MIT to volunteer. Despite all ‘best practices’, the product failed. This was because the US-based company failed to identify the persona and patterns of the average male in India – what is their economic strata, where do they live, how do they shave, what facilities do they have (e.g. running water, electricity and sufficient lighting, etc.). When the management and design team visited India, they found out that the majority of their market did not use running water to rinse the blades, but rather dipped the shaver into a mug of water to rinse it. Also, they did not have sufficient lighting. Hence, for fear of nicking themselves, they shaved carefully. It was a matter of safety over comfort. Such reality was the ‘blind spot’ for Gillette’s designers. Later, armed with this knowledge and other information, such as competitor pricing, Gillette revised the product and relaunched it in India making it well accepted by Indian men.

Olé Olay!
The 1990s was a sagging period for Oil of Olay, P&G’s flagship skin care brand. The product had found itself in a saturated market and the company had to create the need in the mind of the user. P&G wasn’t too late to realize that it had to think differently. It needed to innovate leveraging value. How?

The first thing that the P&G department for Olay did was not to think for the product – but to think from a user’s perspective. The management understood that they had to become a ‘user’ to understand their attitudes, behaviours and actions. Thus the first thing they did was identify the right target group for their research – non-customers who are in markets distant from others! The P&G research team identified that women in their mid-thirties were the ideal study group as this segment were interested in more than just beautiful skin. They were worried about skin dryness, age spots, uneven skin tones, removing wrinkles and so on. Thus P&G understood that they could not just focus on ‘wrinkles’ alone. They reframed their skincare business of helping women to have healthier, youthful and beautiful life rather than just making skin care products.
P&G understood that they had to invest in value innovation where the need is in creating a leap in value offerings to users, thereby creating new uncontested market space and making competition irrelevant.

The result was the highly successful ‘Olay Total Effects’.

Conclusion
Steve Jobs was spot on said, “Design is not just what it looks like and how it feels. Design is how it works.” In other words, the proof of the product or service is in in the experience (value). Application of Design Thinking ensures the outcome. In the world of business, ‘design’ will prove to be the single most important and differentiating genetic structure on which businesses will define themselves. Design must and will become mainstream in every part of the business.