Design Thinking Origin Story plus Some of the People who Made it All Happen: Jo Szczepanska (2017)

Recently design thinking has gained momentum in the business world through mentions in the Harvard Business Review and Forbes publications. As a thing, design thinking has been described as anything from “a unified framework for innovation“ to the “essential tool for simplifying and humanising.”

Being in the news though doesn’t make design thinking anything new. Unlike the radical outcomes it promises, design thinking as an approach has been slowly evolving since the 1960’s. Over the past fifty plus years, design thinking [or design really; let’s be honest] has appropriated many of the best tools and techniques from creative fields, social and computer sciences.