There is a great buzz these days around running Design Sprints to innovate within organisations.
Out of the two forms of thinking ‘’in a business context’’, running Design Sprints fosters fast rather than slow thinking.
The original idea necessary for the creation of a new product or service causing sustainable business growth is not the result of rushed but slow and unhurried thinking.
While Design Sprints can have a significant impact on the implementation/development of an existing idea/intuition for value creation, they are not suited to foster creative thinking in a team trying to innovate their business.
Let me explain this by visualising the steps in starting a new growth initiative:
The growth initiative doesn’t start with a clear problem to solve, but by observing the users in their natural environment and trying accessing their un-articulated set of needs - only after having collected enough evidence, the ideation phase starts.
This process requires teams to strengthen their creative muscles to re-frame the current understanding of the customers and their needs.
Looking at the Sprint page in the Google Ventures website, it’s clear how in the ‘Setting the Stage’ phase (which is before Monday), you need to avail already of two significant factors:
the right team;
the right challenge (a problem to solve).
There is no need to add more, I guess.
On Monday the sprint starts, and the main aim is pushing teams through fast prototyping and testing cycles.
There is nothing wrong with running sprints within your organisation, what is essential though is to be clear on what they can bring to your organisation.
While everyone is pushing on the accelerator, we often forget why we are doing it.
If you are interested in fostering creative thinking in your team schedule a complimentary chat with me here.
