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Main photo: Holger Schlichting, CEO PRAXISFELD GmbH. Top: Design Thinking bridge. Above right: Design Thinking customer needs. Above left: Design Thinking pillars.
Design thinking
- Joint strategies for future and innovation German consulting firm PRAXISFELD GmbH has brought about profitable progress for 25 years. But the business world is rapidly changing and this requires radical measures for continuous innovation. Here, one of PRAXISFELD’s senior consultants explains how thinking with your hands makes your organisation fit for the future. TEXT: SONJA IRANI I PHOTOS: HOLGER SCHLICHTING
“The business world of today has become extremely complex and fast paced,” says Martin Scholz, senior consultant at PRAXISFELD GmbH. “The quickly expanding digitalisation, for example, has a huge influence on our day-to-day work life.” According to Scholz, many business leaders thus experience difficulties when trying to find the right growth strategy for their business. In order to make complex issues of today’s dynamic world tangible and actively change them, PRAXISFLED implements the method of so-called Design Thinking – an innovation process and mindset characterised by extraordinary customer 80 | Issue 40 | July 2016
orientation, creativity, rapid prototyping and joint collaborations. “In our Design Thinking projects we are thinking with our hands. We visualise a lot and prefer to prototype and test ideas by using physical material such as LEGO or paper versus having lengthy discussions. This works excellent for products, but also for services, business models and processes,” reveals Scholz. “It is of utmost importance to think from your customer’s point of view if you want to stay successful and competitive in the long run,” explains Scholz. “With Design Thinking prototypes you can continuously and jointly test with your customers all along the development process. Thus you
don’t lose track and create both a feasible and desired solution.” When the consultants at PRAXISFELD apply this method to their clients’ individual cases, they create a setting which is characterised by flexible rooms, interdisciplinary teams, no respect regarding strong convictions and a rigid process with time boxing. “It’s quite an unusual, but effective, method to identify the root of the problem,” says Scholz. “We bring our clients and their customers closer together, we take the time to thoroughly analyse what a business or its customers need and we build cross-functional or cross-cultural teams in order to overcome supposed knowledge.” According to Scholz, this method is initially unconventional for their clients but creates a great deal of energy, excitement and productivity in the end. www.praxisfeld.com