Design Thinking Research: Making Distinctions: Collaboration versus Cooperation

This book summarizes the results of Design Thinking Research Program at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, USA and the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany. Offering readers a closer look at design thinking, its innovation processes and methods, it covers topics ranging from how to design ideas, methods and technologies, to creativity experiments and creative collaboration in the real world, and the interplay between designers and engineers. But the topics go beyond this in their detailed exploration of design thinking and its use in IT systems engineering fields, and even from a management perspective. The authors show how these methods and strategies actually work in companies, and introduce new technologies and their functions. Furthermore, readers learn how special-purpose design thinking can be used to solve thorny problems in complex fields. Thinking and devising innovations are fundamentally and inherently human activities – so is design thinking. Accordingly,design thinking is not merely the result of special courses nor of being gifted or trained: it’s a way of dealing with our environment and improving techniques, technologies and life.

This edition offers a historic perspective on the theoretical foundations of design thinking. Within the four topic areas, various frameworks, methodologies, mindsets, systems and tools are explored and further developed. The first topic area focuses on team interaction, while the second part addresses tools and techniques for productive collaboration. The third section explores new approaches to teaching and enabling creative skills and lastly the book examines how design thinking is put into practice. All in all, the contributions shed light and provide deeper insights into how to support the collaboration of design teams in order to systematically and successfully develop innovations and design progressive solutions for tomorrow.

More and more organizations have experienced the impact of design thinking on their innovation culture. People can see the way it changes how they and their coworkers innovate, how it affects their teamwork, and the impact it has on the quality of their output. The desire to understand the reason for this impact and to improve our knowledge about innovation is what drives the HPI Stanford Design Thinking Research Program. Since 2008 scientists from the Hasso Plattner Institute and Stanford University have engaged in multifaceted research projects to learn more about the underlying principles of this method and how and why it works. The outcomes of their studies, experiments and investigations in this eighth year of the program have been compiled in this book.

This volume presents a broad range of findings on team interaction, and highlights research into the tools and techniques that foster productive collaboration. Moreover, it addresses design thinking education and training, presenting promising new approaches and tools. The final part of this publication compiles findings on how design thinking is applied in practice.

The results of this rigorous academic research are not intended to be discussed exclusively in the scientific community. The findings, as well as the new design thinking approaches and tools, are available to anyone seeking to support drive innovation through collaboration, be it in companies or in society.