Have you taken your first steps into the magical world of business design thinking? This customer-centric approach to problem solving is omnipresent; however, you might find it difficult to get the hang of it. But don’t worry, in order to get you started right and well, we drafted a little cheat sheet with 8 business design thinking dos and don’ts. Let’s dive right in!

1. Get all eyes in the same direction

In order to successfully boost innovation through business design thinking within your marketing team or company, it’s vital that all internal stakeholders believe this is the key to growth. Innovation shouldn’t only be on top of the agenda of your innovation team, it must be a priority in the whole company – starting with management.

2. Pick the right source to gather your insights

Business design thinking starts with customer insights. This means you need to step away from your computer and get to know your customer – a crucial step that should not be skipped or taken lightly. You think you can settle for inside information based on experience, present knowledge or company history? Nope, work outside-in instead of inside-out and make sure you look at your customer through the right glasses.

3. Your brain is hungry. Feed it with inspiration!

Ready to dive into a creative brainstorm to ideate for solutions to your customer’s key problems? Great. Now pause and ask yourself: am I up-to-date about potential future evolutions and disruptions in my (or other) fields that impact my customer? Gather inspirational cases and best practices that might feed your brain during the ideation phase. Creativity feeds creativity; so make sure to get inspired.

4. A visual practitioner is your best brainstorm-buddy

Inviting a visual practitioner to your ideation session that’s gifted in drawing clear visuals will make it easier to visualize persona, key problems and customer journeys. He or she will also help in creating a shared image of the concept you’re working on, which makes the outcome of the workshop much more tangible and powerful to work with afterwards.

5. Profit from the right tools

We live in a digital age where we have plenty of tools available – use them! To easily map customer journeys for example, we like to use UXPRESSIA. It’s a flexible and easy-to-use tool that allows you to create beautifully visualized customer journeys that you can share with your team members. On top of that, your team can view or edit them at any moment in time. 

6. Think big, start small when it comes to prototyping

Remember, a prototype is not a final product. However, try to add as much important details as possible. Your prototype has to show all the important aspects that were determined in the value proposition so you can test and improve it.

7. Test before launching

You’ve had some brainstorms, you’ve created a prototype, you’re ready to jump into the field and launch that rocket. But that’s were it goes wrong all too often. In order to have a successful product or service, you need feedback. Real client feedback, that is. So test the prototype, talk to your customer, adapt the product and iterate, iterate, iterate! (Pssst… Buffl is a great tool for gathering feedback from different target groups if you have difficulties recruiting clients for testing.)

8. Pick your experts

You’re researching, brainstorming, designing and testing. These steps might require skills and time you don’t have available within your team. Make sure to surround yourself with the right experts. You don’t have to walk alone! Are you missing the right in-house expertise? You can easily find a partner to get you up and running. A partner like The House of Marketing can help you build and kick off a solid business design thinking track within your team or company. 



Would you like to know more about business design thinking? Join our free webinar on Business Design Thinking.