Leverage Design Thinking to Develop New Business Models

The construct of a design-driven innovation game allows the open-minded brainstorming for shaping digital business models.

Every corporate venture comes with a business model, it’s about how the business makes a profit. The fundamental purpose of an organization is to produce 'value' for its customers. The emergent digital technologies and abundant information provide the very clue for the business growth opportunity. How to leverage design thinking and creativity to develop new business models and unleash the growth potential of the company?




Leverage design thinking to create systems optimally suited to explore the new business model: The business model is an entire frame of critical elements that describe the intents and constraints of an organization. With emerging digital trends and abundant of information & knowledge, business leaders should leverage design thinking to discover and develop potential business models and pursue growth opportunities through the methodical examination of alternative businesses or explore distinct value creation based on the business objectives and nature of an organization. Look at the business model as the “what” the business is all about or what it will do for delighting customers. Business Modeling is structural and can be both created and changed very quickly. Organizational leaders need to apply design thinking to develop an optimal system suited to explore new business models, methodologically review a list of levers from business model components, develop a list of potential business model options, and implement the best ones based on the business core competencies and maximize the business value it could bring up.

The construct of a design-driven innovation game allows the open-minded brainstorming for shaping digital business models: There's a fundamental shift happening with the emergence of converging technologies that impact the business through cross-departmental communication and collaboration. Organizational leaders apply creativity to ask open-ended questions by taking advantage of digital communication channels. It’s important to create a space for open dialogue and design brainstorming, developing a common understanding of business model innovation effort, creating the necessity and motivation for it, as well as getting the management buy-in. Business leaders can envision the future of the business, identify core competencies, leverage design thinking to craft new business model, develop hybrid structures, build robust business processes, embed change and feedback mechanism into every aspect of the business, encourage people thinking out-of-the-box, make people feel involved in the design and implementation of changes, learn and share, enjoy fresh ideas and experiment with alternative solutions.

Design and visualization enables people to develop new business models for bridging between the innovations of tomorrow with the business realities of today for: Design requires an ability to articulate and reflect - which both are greatly assisted by visualizations. Visualization is crucial yet largely overlooked in innovation strategizing, such as business model innovation.That being said, the more tangible the innovation becomes in a visual form, the more it becomes evaluated on this execution alone. However, there is a big challenge to develop visual thinking skills, the ability to see object-relationships and the ability to see object-relationships morphing through space-time are both marketable skills, and the ability to see the "gaps" between object relationships and map these into the future.

Re-imagining the future of business is exciting, but investigating the different path for exploring new business models and unlocking business potential needs to take a systematic approach and leverage design thinking, to develop it into a more solid form, with the goal to run a meaningful business by solving the current problem with design thinking mindset and ensure the business prosperity with long term perspectives.