Abstract
Design thinking has recently been the subject of considerable attention from academics and practitioners. In management discourse, design thinking is a creative and human‐centred problem‐solving approach based on designers’ practices, used mainly in the pursuit of product, service and process innovation. Despite being increasingly promoted and adopted as an approach to innovation, we know little about whether and how design thinking influences firm performance. Drawing upon the resource‐based view of the firm and dynamic capability theory, this paper answers these questions via a two‐study approach in the context of R&D. Study 1 explores the perceived performance impact of design thinking in a descriptive way. Study 2 investigates the mediating role of organizational innovative capability in design thinking and organizational innovative performance relationship. The results from these two studies shed light on design thinking’s performance impact. In addition, they add evidentiary support to the contention that design‐thinking practices applied in R&D help develop organizational innovative capability, which in turn increases organizational innovative performance. This research adds welcome evidentiary support to the contention that design thinking practices, applied in R&D, help develop organizational innovative capability, which in turn increases organizational innovative performance. Our study offers a theory‐based and actionable approach which explains the underlying mechanism through which a firm can boost its innovation performance by the adoption of design thinking.
Highlights
Design thinking, with its emphasis on human- centredness and experimentation, is an emerging approach and practice in the innovation field, in the area of new product development (Mootee, 2013; Carlgren et al, 2016b; Bagno and Salerno, 2017; Micheli et al, 2019; Knight and Daymond, 2020; Magistretti et al, 2021a, 2021b)
Consistent with existing research, this study argues that design thinking practices contribute to organizational innovative performance, in the area of new product/service development within R&D settings
Hypothesis 1 which proposed a positive relationship between design thinking practices and organizational innovative performance was supported
Summary
With its emphasis on human- centredness and experimentation, is an emerging approach and practice in the innovation field, in the area of new product development (Mootee, 2013; Carlgren et al, 2016b; Bagno and Salerno, 2017; Micheli et al, 2019; Knight and Daymond, 2020; Magistretti et al, 2021a, 2021b). The recent spate of acquisitions of design agencies by the major consulting firms is seen as evidence of this increasing attention (Dell’Era et al, 2020)
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