Online Discussion #2

After reading 

Design Thinking by Tim Brown

 answer the following questions:

1. Which of the elements of the design thinking approach do you think will be easiest for you to incorporate into how you currently approach problem-solving? Which do you think will be most challenging? Why? 

2. Think of a product or service that you use regularly. How might it have been designed differently if it were designed with a life-centered design process?

www.hbr.org

June 2008

60 The Secrets to Successful Strategy
Execution
Gary L. Neilson, Karla L. Martin, and Elizabeth Powers

72 The Next Revolution in Productivity
Ric Merrifield, Jack Calhoun, and Dennis Stevens

84 Design Thinking
Tim Brown

96 The Contradictions That Drive Toyota’s
Success
Hirotaka Takeuchi, Emi Osono, and Norihiko Shimizu

106 The Multiunit Enterprise
David A. Garvin and Lynne C. Levesque

22 Forethought

41 hBr Case study

Why Are We Losing All Our Good People?
Edward E. Lawler III

53 First Person

Business Basics at the Base of the Pyramid
Vikram Akula

123 Managing yourseLF

How the Best of the Best Get Better
and Better
Graham Jones

129 Big PiCture

Patent Sharks
Joachim Henkel and Markus Reitzig

138 exeCutive suMMaries

144 PaneL disCussion

…page 60

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84 Harvard Business Review | June 2008 | hbr.org

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homas EDison created the electric light-
bulb and then wrapped an entire indus-

try around it. The lightbulb is most often
thought of as his signature invention, but

Edison understood that the bulb was little more
than a parlor trick without a system of electric power
generation and transmission to make it truly useful.
so he created that, too.

Thus Edison’s genius lay in his ability to conceive
of a fully developed marketplace, not simply a dis-
crete device. he was able to envision how people
would want to use what he made, and he engineered
toward that insight. he wasn’t always prescient (he

Thinking like a designer
can transform the way
you develop products,

services, processes – and
even strategy.

by Tim Brown
Thinking

hbr.org | June 2008 | Harvard Business Review 85

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Design Thinking

86 Harvard Business Review | June 2008 | hbr.org

originally believed the phonograph would be used mainly
as a business machine for recording and replaying dictation),
but he invariably gave great consideration to users’ needs and
preferences.

Edison’s approach was an early example of what is now
called “design thinking” – a methodology that imbues the
full spectrum of innovation activities with a human-centered
design ethos. By this I mean that innovation is powered by a
thorough understanding, through direct observation, of what
people want and need in their lives and what they like or dis-
like about the way particular products are made, packaged,
marketed, sold, and supported.

Many people believe that Edison’s greatest invention was
the modern R&D laboratory and methods of experimental
investigation. Edison wasn’t a narrowly specialized scientist
but a broad generalist with a shrewd
business sense. In his Menlo Park, New
Jersey, laboratory he surrounded himself
with gifted tinkerers, improvisers, and
experimenters. Indeed, he broke the
mold of the “lone genius inventor” by
creating a team-based approach to in-
novation. Although Edison biographers
write of the camaraderie enjoyed by this
merry band, the process also featured
endless rounds of trial and error – the

“99% perspiration” in Edison’s famous
definition of genius. His approach was
intended not to validate preconceived hypotheses but to help
experimenters learn something new from each iterative stab.
Innovation is hard work; Edison made it a profession that
blended art, craft, science, business savvy, and an astute under-
standing of customers and markets.

Design thinking is a lineal descendant of that tradition. Put
simply, it is a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and
methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically
feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into cus-
tomer value and market opportunity. Like Edison’s painstaking
innovation process, it often entails a great deal of perspiration.

I believe that design thinking has much to offer a business
world in which most management ideas and best practices are
freely available to be copied and exploited. Leaders now look
to innovation as a principal source of differentiation and com-
petitive advantage; they would do well to incorporate design
thinking into all phases of the process.

Getting Beneath the Surface
Historically, design has been treated as a downstream step in
the development process – the point where designers, who
have played no earlier role in the substantive work of in-
novation, come along and put a beautiful wrapper around
the idea. To be sure, this approach has stimulated market
growth in many areas by making new products and technolo-

gies aesthetically attractive and therefore more desirable to
consumers or by enhancing brand perception through smart,
evocative advertising and communication strategies. Dur-
ing the latter half of the twentieth century design became
an increasingly valuable competitive asset in, for example,
the consumer electronics, automotive, and consumer pack-
aged goods industries. But in most others it remained a late-
stage add-on.

Now, however, rather than asking designers to make an
already developed idea more attractive to consumers, compa-
nies are asking them to create ideas that better meet consum-
ers’ needs and desires. The former role is tactical, and results
in limited value creation; the latter is strategic, and leads to
dramatic new forms of value.

Moreover, as economies in the developed world shift from
industrial manufacturing to knowl-
edge work and service delivery, inno-
vation’s terrain is expanding. Its ob-
jectives are no longer just physical
products; they are new sorts of pro-
cesses, services, IT-powered interac-
tions, entertainments, and ways of
communicating and collaborating –
exactly the kinds of human-centered
activities in which design thinking
can make a decisive difference. (See
the sidebar “A Design Thinker’s Per-
sonality Profile.”)

Consider the large health care provider Kaiser Permanente,
which sought to improve the overall quality of both patients’
and medical practitioners’ experiences. Businesses in the ser-
vice sector can often make significant innovations on the front
lines of service creation and delivery. By teaching design think-
ing techniques to nurses, doctors, and administrators, Kaiser
hoped to inspire its practitioners to contribute new ideas.
Over the course of several months Kaiser teams participated
in workshops with the help of my firm, IDEO, and a group of
Kaiser coaches. These workshops led to a portfolio of innova-
tions, many of which are being rolled out across the company.

One of them – a project to reengineer nursing-staff shift
changes at four Kaiser hospitals – perfectly illustrates both the
broader nature of innovation “products” and the value of a holis-
tic design approach. The core project team included a strategist
(formerly a nurse), an organizational-development specialist,
a technology expert, a process designer, a union representative,
and designers from IDEO. This group worked with innovation
teams of frontline practitioners in each of the four hospitals.

During the earliest phase of the project, the core team col-
laborated with nurses to identify a number of problems in the
way shift changes occurred. Chief among these was the fact
that nurses routinely spent the first 45 minutes of each shift at
the nurses’ station debriefing the departing shift about the sta-
tus of patients. Their methods of information exchange were

The surgeons
described a
new device for
sinus surgery. one designer
grabbed a marker, a film
canister, and a clothespin and
taped them together. “Do you
mean like this?” he asked.

hbr.org | June 2008 | Harvard Business Review 87

different in every hospital, ranging from recorded dictation to
face-to-face conversations. And they compiled the information
they needed to serve patients in a variety of ways – scrawling
quick notes on the back of any available scrap of paper, for
example, or even on their scrubs. Despite a significant invest-
ment of time, the nurses often failed to learn some of the
things that mattered most to patients, such as how they had
fared during the previous shift, which family members were
with them, and whether or not certain tests or therapies had
been administered. For many patients, the team learned, each
shift change felt like a hole in their care. Using the insights
gleaned from observing these important times of transition,
the innovation teams explored potential solutions through
brainstorming and rapid prototyping. (Prototypes of a service
innovation will of course not be physical, but they must be
tangible. Because pictures help us understand what is learned
through prototyping, we often videotape the performance of
prototyped services, as we did at Kaiser.)

Prototyping doesn’t have to be complex and expensive. In
another health care project, IDEO helped a group of surgeons
develop a new device for sinus surgery. As the surgeons de-
scribed the ideal physical characteristics of the instrument,
one of the designers grabbed a whiteboard marker, a film
canister, and a clothespin and taped them together. “Do you
mean like this?” he asked. With his rudimentary prototype in
hand, the surgeons were able to be much more precise about
what the ultimate design should accomplish.

Prototypes should command only as much time, effort, and
investment as are needed to generate useful feedback and
evolve an idea. The more “finished” a prototype seems, the less
likely its creators will be to pay attention to and profit from
feedback. The goal of prototyping isn’t to finish. It is to learn
about the strengths and weaknesses of the idea and to identify
new directions that further prototypes might take.

The design that emerged for shift changes had nurses pass-
ing on information in front of the patient rather than at the
nurses’ station. In only a week the team built a working pro-
totype that included new procedures and some simple soft-
ware with which nurses could call up previous shift-change
notes and add new ones. They could input patient informa-
tion throughout a shift rather than scrambling at the end to
pass it on. The software collated the data in a simple format
customized for each nurse at the start of a shift. The result
was both higher-quality knowledge transfer and reduced prep
time, permitting much earlier and better-informed contact
with patients.

As Kaiser measured the impact of this change over time, it
learned that the mean interval between a nurse’s arrival and
first interaction with a patient had been more than halved,
adding a huge amount of nursing time across the four hospi-
tals. Perhaps just as important was the effect on the quality
of the nurses’ work experience. One nurse commented, “I’m
an hour ahead, and I’ve only been here 45 minutes.” Another

A Design Thinker’s
Personality Profile

Contrary to popular opinion, you don’t need
weird shoes or a black turtleneck to be a design
thinker. Nor are design thinkers necessarily cre-
ated only by design schools, even though most
professionals have had some kind of design train-
ing. My experience is that many people outside
professional design have a natural aptitude for
design thinking, which the right development
and experiences can unlock. Here, as a starting
point, are some of the characteristics to look for
in design thinkers:

Empathy. They can imagine the world from mul-
tiple perspectives – those of colleagues, clients,
end users, and customers (current and prospec-
tive). By taking a “people first” approach, design
thinkers can imagine solutions that are inherently
desirable and meet explicit or latent needs. Great
design thinkers observe the world in minute
detail. They notice things that others do not and
use their insights to inspire innovation.

Integrative thinking. They not only rely
on analytical processes (those that produce
either/or choices) but also exhibit the ability to
see all of the salient – and sometimes contra-
dictory – aspects of a confounding problem
and create novel solutions that go beyond and
dramatically improve on existing alternatives.
(See Roger Martin’s The Opposable Mind: How
Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative
Thinking.)

optimism. They assume that no matter how
challenging the constraints of a given problem,
at least one potential solution is better than the
existing alternatives.

Experimentalism. Significant innovations don’t
come from incremental tweaks. Design thinkers
pose questions and explore constraints in cre-
ative ways that proceed in entirely new directions.

Collaboration. The increasing complexity of
products, services, and experiences has replaced
the myth of the lone creative genius with the
reality of the enthusiastic interdisciplinary col-
laborator. The best design thinkers don’t simply
work alongside other disciplines; many of them
have significant experience in more than one. At
IDEO we employ people who are engineers and
marketers, anthropologists and industrial design-
ers, architects and psychologists.

88 Harvard Business Review | June 2008 | hbr.org

said, “[This is the] first time I’ve ever made it out of here at
the end of my shift.”

Thus did a group of nurses significantly improve their pa-
tients’ experience while also improving their own job satis-
faction and productivity. By applying a human-centered
design methodology, they were able to create a rela-
tively small process innovation that produced an
outsize impact. The new shift changes are being
rolled out across the Kaiser system, and the ca-
pacity to reliably record critical patient infor-
mation is being integrated into an electronic
medical records initiative at the company.

What might happen at Kaiser if every
nurse, doctor, and administrator in every
hospital felt empowered to tackle problems
the way this group did? To find out, Kaiser
has created the Garfield Innovation Center,
which is run by Kaiser’s original core team
and acts as a consultancy to the entire or-
ganization. The center’s mission is to pur-
sue innovation that enhances the patient
experience and, more broadly, to envision
Kaiser’s “hospital of the future.” It is intro-
ducing tools for design thinking across the
Kaiser system.

How Design Thinking Happens
The myth of creative genius is resilient:
We believe that great ideas pop fully
formed out of brilliant minds, in feats of
imagination well beyond the abilities of
mere mortals. But what the Kaiser nursing
team accomplished was neither a sudden
breakthrough nor the lightning strike of
genius; it was the result of hard work aug-
mented by a creative human-centered discov-
ery process and followed by iterative cycles of
prototyping, testing, and refinement.

The design process is best described meta-
phorically as a system of spaces rather than a pre-
defined series of orderly steps. The spaces demar-
cate different sorts of related activities that together
form the continuum of innovation. Design thinking
can feel chaotic to those experiencing it for the first
time. But over the life of a project participants come to
see – as they did at Kaiser – that the process makes sense
and achieves results, even though its architecture differs
from the linear, milestone-based processes typical of other
kinds of business activities.

Design projects must ultimately pass through three spaces
(see the exhibit at right). We label these “inspiration,” for the
circumstances (be they a problem, an opportunity, or both)
that motivate the search for solutions; “ideation,” for the pro-

inspiration

Put customers in
the midst of every-
thing; describe their
journeys

Tell more stories (they
keep ideas alive)

Communicate
internally – don’t work
in the dark!

Build creative frameworks
(order out of chaos)

Apply integrative
thinking

Make many sketches,
concoct scenarios

Brainstorm

2

Prototype, test,
prototype, test…

3
Move on to the
next project – repeat

Make the case to
the business –
spread the word

Help marketing
design a communi-
cation strategy

Execute the Vision
Engineer the experience

ideation

Prototype some more,
test with users, test
internally

Design Thinking

im
pl

em
en

tat
ion

hbr.org | June 2008 | Harvard Business Review 89

inspiration

Have a project room
where you can share
insights, tell stories

What are the business con-
straints (time, lack of resources,
impoverished customer base,
shrinking market)?

Involve many disciplines
from the start (e.g., engi-
neering & marketing)

Are valuable ideas, as-
sets, and expertise hiding
inside the business?

How can new
technology help?

Organize information and
synthesize possibilities
(tell more stories!)

Pay close attention to
“extreme” users such as
children or the elderly

1
Build implementation
resources into your plan

Expect success

What’s the business prob-
lem? Where’s the oppor-
tunity? What has changed
(or soon may change)?

Look at the world:
Observe what people do,
how they think, what they
need and want

cess of generating, developing, and testing ideas that may
lead to solutions; and “implementation,” for the charting of a
path to market. Projects will loop back through these spaces –
particularly the first two – more than once as ideas are refined
and new directions taken.

Sometimes the trigger for a project is leadership’s recogni-
tion of a serious change in business fortunes. In 2004 Shimano,

a Japanese manufacturer of bicycle components, faced flat-
tening growth in its traditional high-end road-racing and

mountain-bike segments in the United States. The com-
pany had always relied on technology innovations

to drive its growth and naturally tried to predict
where the next one might come from. This time

Shimano thought a high-end casual bike that ap-
pealed to boomers would be an interesting area

to explore. IDEO was invited to collaborate on
the project.

During the inspiration phase, an inter-
disciplinary team of IDEO and Shimano
people – designers, behavioral scientists,
marketers, and engineers – worked to
identify appropriate constraints for the
project. The team began with a hunch
that it should focus more broadly than
on the high-end market, which might
prove to be neither the only nor even
the best source of new growth. So it
set out to learn why 90% of American
adults don’t ride bikes. Looking for new
ways to think about the problem, the
team members spent time with all kinds
of consumers. They discovered that nearly

everyone they met rode a bike as a child
and had happy memories of doing so. They

also discovered that many Americans are
intimidated by cycling today – by the retail

experience (including the young, Lycra-clad ath-
letes who serve as sales staff in most independent

bike stores); by the complexity and cost of the bikes,
accessories, and specialized clothing; by the danger

of cycling on roads not designed for bicycles; and by
the demands of maintaining a technically sophisticated

bike that is ridden infrequently.
This human-centered exploration – which took its insights

from people outside Shimano’s core customer base – led to
the realization that a whole new category of bicycling might
be able to reconnect American consumers to their experi-
ences as children while also dealing with the root causes of
their feelings of intimidation – thus revealing a large un-
tapped market.

The design team, responsible for every aspect of what was
envisioned as a holistic experience, came up with the concept
of “Coasting.” Coasting would aim to entice lapsed bikers into

im
pl
em
en
tat
ion

Design Thinking

90 Harvard Business Review | June 2008 | hbr.org

an activity that was simple, straight-
forward, and fun. Coasting bikes, built
more for pleasure than for sport, would
have no controls on the handlebars, no
cables snaking along the frame. As on
the earliest bikes many of us rode, the brakes would be applied
by backpedaling. With the help of an onboard computer, a
minimalist three gears would shift automatically as the bicy-
cle gained speed or slowed. The bikes would feature comfort-
ably padded seats, be easy to operate, and require relatively
little maintenance.

Three major manufacturers – Trek, Raleigh, and Giant – de-
veloped new bikes incorporating innovative components from
Shimano. But the design team didn’t stop with the bike itself.
In-store retailing strategies were created for independent bike
dealers, in part to alleviate the discomfort that biking novices
felt in stores designed to serve enthusiasts. The team devel-
oped a brand that identified Coasting as a way to enjoy life.
(“Chill. Explore. Dawdle. Lollygag. First one there’s a rotten
egg.”) And it designed a public relations campaign – in collabo-
ration with local governments and cycling organizations – that
identified safe places to ride.

Although many others became involved in the project
when it reached the implementation phase, the application
of design thinking in the earliest stages of innovation is what
led to this complete solution. Indeed, the single thing one

would have expected the design team
to be responsible for – the look of the
bikes – was intentionally deferred to
later in the development process, when
the team created a reference design to

inspire the bike companies’ own design teams. After a success-
ful launch in 2007, seven more bicycle manufacturers signed
up to produce Coasting bikes in 2008.

Taking a Systems View
Many of the world’s most successful brands create break-
through ideas that are inspired by a deep understanding of
consumers’ lives and use the principles of design to innovate
and build value. Sometimes innovation has to account for
vast differences in cultural and socioeconomic conditions. In
such cases design thinking can suggest creative alternatives
to the assumptions made in developed societies.

India’s Aravind Eye Care System is probably the world’s
largest provider of eye care. From April 2006 to March 2007
Aravind served more than 2.3 million patients and performed
more than 270,000 surgeries. Founded in 1976 by Dr. G. Venka-
taswamy, Aravind has as its mission nothing less than the erad-
ication of needless blindness among India’s population, includ-
ing the rural poor, through the effective delivery of superior
ophthalmic care. (One of the company’s slogans is “Quality is
for everyone.”) From 11 beds in Dr. Venkataswamy’s home, Ara-

A SKETCH (left, seat plus helmet
storage) and a ProToTyPE (middle)
show elements of Coasting bicycles.
shimano’s Coasting WEBSITE (right)
points users to safe bike paths.

Begin at the beginning.
Involve design thinkers at the
very start of the innovation pro-
cess, before any direction has
been set. Design thinking will
help you explore more ideas
more quickly than you could
otherwise.

Take a human-centered

approach. Along with busi-
ness and technology consider-
ations, innovation should factor
in human behavior, needs, and
preferences. Human-centered
design thinking – especially
when it includes research
based on direct observation –
will capture unexpected in-
sights and produce innovation
that more precisely reflects
what consumers want.

Try early and often.
Create an expectation of rapid
experimentation and prototyp-
ing. Encourage teams to create
a prototype in the first week
of a project. Measure progress
with a metric such as aver-
age time to first prototype or
number of consumers exposed
to prototypes during the life of
a program.

seek outside help.

Expand the innovation
ecosystem by looking for
opportunities to co-create
with customers and consum-
ers. Exploit Web 2.0 networks
to enlarge the effective scale
of your innovation team.

How to Make Design Thinking Part of the Innovation Drill

hbr.org | June 2008 | Harvard Business Review 91

vind has grown to encompass five hos-
pitals (three others are under Aravind
management), a plant that manufac-
tures ophthalmic products, a research
foundation, and a training center.

Aravind’s execution of its mission and
model is in some respects reminiscent of Edison’s holistic con-
cept of electric power delivery. The challenge the company
faces is logistic: how best to deliver eye care to populations far
removed from the urban centers where Aravind’s hospitals are
located. Aravind calls itself an “eye care system” for a reason:
Its business goes beyond ophthalmic care per se to transmit
expert practice to populations that have historically lacked ac-
cess. The company saw its network of hospitals as a beginning
rather than an end.

Much of its innovative energy has focused on bringing both
preventive care and diagnostic screening to the countryside.
Since 1990 Aravind has held “eye camps” in India’s rural ar-
eas, in an effort to register patients, administer eye exams,
teach eye care, and identify people who may require surgery
or advanced diagnostic services or who have conditions that
warrant monitoring.

In 2006 and early 2007 Aravind eye camps screened more
than 500,000 patients, of whom nearly 113,000 required surgery.
Access to transportation is a common problem in rural areas, so
the company provides buses that take patients needing further

treatment to one of its urban facilities
and then home again. Over the years it
has bolstered its diagnostic capabilities
in the field with telemedicine trucks,
which enable doctors back at Aravind’s
hospitals to participate in care decisions.

In recent years Aravind’s analysis of its screening data has led
to specialized eye camps for certain demographic groups, such
as school-age children and industrial and government workers;
the company also holds camps specifically to screen for eye
diseases associated with diabetes. All these services are free for
the roughly 60% of patients who cannot afford to pay.

In developing its system of care, Aravind has consistently
exhibited many characteristics of design thinking. It has used
as a creative springboard two constraints: the poverty and
remoteness of its clientele and its own lack of access to expen-
sive solutions. For example, a pair of intraocular lenses made
in the West costs $200, which severely limited the number of
patients Aravind could help. Rather than try to persuade sup-
pliers to change the way they did things, Aravind built its own
solution: a manufacturing plant in the basement of one of its
hospitals. It eventually discovered that it could use relatively
inexpensive technology to produce lenses for $4 a pair.

Throughout its history – defined by the constraints of poverty,
ignorance, and an enormous unmet need – Aravind has built
a systemic solution to a complex social and medical problem.

ArAvInD’S outreach to rural
patients frequently brings basic

DIAgnoSTIC ToolS (left and
center) and an advanced satellite-

linked TElEMEDICInE TruCK
(right) to remote areas of india.

Blend big and small

projects. Manage a portfolio
of innovation that stretches
from shorter-term incremental
ideas to longer-term revolu-
tionary ones. Expect busi-
ness units to drive and fund
incremental innovation, but be
willing to initiate revolutionary
innovation from the top.

Budget to the pace of

innovation. Design thinking
happens quickly, yet the route
to market can be unpredictable.
Don’t constrain the pace at
which you can innovate by rely-
ing on cumbersome budgeting
cycles. Be prepared to rethink
your funding approach as proj-
ects proceed and teams learn
more about opportunities.

Find talent any way you can.
Look to hire from interdisci-
plinary programs like the new
Institute of Design at Stanford
and progressive business
schools like Rotman, in Toronto.
People with more-conventional
design backgrounds can push
solutions far beyond your
expectations. You may even be
able to train nondesigners with
the right attributes to excel in
design-thinking roles.

Design for the cycle.

In many businesses people
move every 12 to 18 months.
But design projects may take
longer than that to get from
day one through implementa-
tion. Plan assignments so
that design thinkers go from
inspiration to ideation to imple-
mentation. Experiencing the full
cycle builds better judgment
and creates great long-term
benefits for the organization.

Design Thinking

92 Harvard Business Review | June 2008 | hbr.org

Getting Back to the Surface
I argued earlier that design thinking can lead to innovation
that goes beyond aesthetics, but that doesn’t mean that form
and aesthetics are unimportant. Magazines like to publish
photographs of the newest, coolest products for a reason: They
are sexy and appeal to our emotions. Great design satisfies
both our needs and our desires. Often the emotional connec-
tion to a product or an image is what engages us in the first
place. Time and again we see successful products that were
not necessarily the first to market but were the first to appeal
to us emotionally and functionally. In other words, they do
the job and we love them. The iPod was not the first MP3
player, but it was the first to be delightful. Target’s products
appeal emotionally through design and functionally through
price – simultaneously.

This idea will grow ever more important in the future. As
Daniel Pink writes in his book A Whole New Mind, “Abundance
has satisfied, and even over-satisfied, the material needs of
millions – boosting the significance of beauty and emotion
and accelerating individuals’ search for meaning.” As more of
our basic needs are met, we increasingly expect sophisticated
experiences that are emotionally satisfying and meaningful.
These experiences will not be simple products. They will be
complex combinations of products, services, spaces, and infor-
mation. They will be the ways we get educated, the ways we
are entertained, the ways we stay healthy, the ways we share
and communicate. Design thinking is a tool for imagining
these experiences as well as giving them a desirable form.

One example of experiential innovation comes from a finan-
cial services company. In late 2005 Bank of America launched
a new savings account service called “Keep the Change.” IDEO,
working with a team from the bank, helped iden-
tify a consumer behavior that many people will
recognize: After paying cash for something, we put
the coins we received in change into a jar at home.
Once the jar is full, we take the coins to the bank
and deposit them in a savings account. For many
people, it’s an easy way of saving. Bank of America’s
innovation was to build this behavior into a debit
card account. Customers who use their debit cards
to make purchases can now choose to have the total
rounded up to the nearest dollar and the difference
deposited in their savings accounts.

The success of this innovation lay in its appeal to
an instinctive desire we have to put money aside in a
painless and invisible way. Keep the Change creates
an experience that feels natural because it models
behavior that many of us already exhibit. To be sure,
Bank of America sweetens the deal by matching
100% of the change saved in the first three months
and 5% of annual totals (up to $250) thereafter. This
encourages customers to try it out. But the real pay-
off is emotional: the gratification that comes with

monthly statements showing customers they’ve saved money
without even trying.

In less than a year the program attracted 2.5 million custom-
ers. It is credited with 700,000 new checking accounts and a
million new savings accounts. Enrollment now totals more than
5 million people who together have saved more than $500 mil-
lion. Keep the Change demonstrates that design thinking can
identify an aspect of human behavior and then convert it into
both a customer benefit and a business value.

Thomas Edison represents what many of us think of as a
golden age of American innovation – a time when new ideas
transformed every aspect of our lives. The need for transfor-
mation is, if anything, greater now than ever before. No mat-
ter where we look, we see problems that can be solved only
through innovation: unaffordable or unavailable health care,
billions of people trying to live on just a few dollars a day,
energy usage that outpaces the planet’s ability to support it,
education systems that fail many students, companies whose
traditional markets are disrupted by new technologies or de-
mographic shifts. These problems all have people at their heart.
They require a human-centered, creative, iterative, and practi-
cal approach to finding the best ideas and ultimate solutions.
Design thinking is just such an approach to innovation.

Tim Brown (tbrown@ideo.com) is the CEO and president of
IDEO, an innovation and design firm with headquarters in Palo
Alto, California. His designs have won numerous awards and
been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the
Axis Gallery in Tokyo, and the Design Museum in London.

Reprint R0806E

“It’s good to finally meet you after all
those years of trying to avoid you.” P.

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