Advancing from design thinker to rigateur

What came before design thinking?

Brainstorm then project manage

This primitive way of creating the new was widely employed before design thinking arrived on the scene, even in otherwise sophisticated organisations.

Sometimes the brainstorming part was nothing more than meeting participants advocating for their pet ideas, as seen in the TV show The Apprentice.

Even the most potent idea emerging from a brainstorming session can be neutered when it enters the project management stage.

Bringing an idea to life is more like having a baby than undertaking a project.

Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving Process

Side note: Up until the 1990s, what today would be termed an innovation project or change project would commonly be classed as a problem solving project. The term new product development was also prevalent. Usage chronology: problem solving > change > innovation > transformation.

Former advertising executive Alex Osborn developed the rules-based brainstorming method in the early 1940s and founded the Creative Education Foundation in 1954. Sid Parnes took over the chair when Osborn died in 1966.

Alex Osborn and Sid Parnes introduced their Creative Problem Solving (CPS) Process in the 1960s.

Synectics

Synectics is a structured creative problem solving method that uses analogies and metaphors to break fixed mental patterns and generate innovative solutions. The approach was popular in the 1970s and 80s as an alternative to Osborn-Parnes.

Design thinking: the fundamentals

In the 1990s, David Kelley and Tim Brown of the global design and innovation company IDEO brought together principles, concepts and methods that had been brewing for many years and distilled them into a unified concept they named design thinking.

Later they adapted the approach for business management and organisational change applications, working in partnership with renowned strategy exponent Roger Martin.

Design thinking consists of five non-linear, iterative phases (or kinds of work):

• Empathise (empathising)
• Define (defining)
• Ideate (ideating)
• Prototype (prototyping)
• Test (testing)

Nielsen Norman Group adds a sixth phase, Implement (implementing).

Others use different labels, or include additional phases, or both.

In 2022, IDEO adopted a six-aspect design thinking process: Frame a question; Gather inspiration; Generate ideas; Make ideas tangible; Test to learn; Share the story. The firm also talks about “the three core activities of design thinking: Inspiration, Ideation and Implementation”.

Design thinking is a broad approach, not a codified method

Design thinking refers to the set of cognitive, strategic and practical procedures used by designers in the process of designing, and to the body of knowledge that has been developed about how people reason when engaging with design problems. Design thinking is also associated with prescriptions for the innovation of products and services within business and social contexts.

Wikipedia: Design thinking 

Design thinking is both an ideology and a process that seeks to solve complex problems in a user-centric way.

It focuses on achieving practical results and solutions that are:

• Technically feasible: They can be developed into functional products or processes;
• Economically viable: The business can afford to implement them;
• Desirable for the user: They meet a real human need.

Source: What is Design Thinking Process? by Nasir Ahmed

Jump ahead to read more

Although each entrepreneur, corporate team or consulting firm will practise design thinking in its own way, using methods of its own choosing, a design thinking project generally displays the following characteristics:

1. The needs and concerns of the intended customers or users are kept to the fore.
2. Work is undertaken by a multidisciplinary team.
3. Work is iterative.
4. Experimentation is encouraged. Prototyping and testing begin early.
5. There are multiple periods of diverge-converge work. Some practitioners refer to each period as a diamond — see for example the Design Council’s Double Diamond framework.
6. The primary method for producing ideas is brainstorming or one of its derivatives.

The rigateur’s way of thinking, doing and being is a good fit with design thinking

It is wholly consistent with items 1 to 4 in the above list. Regarding items 5 and 6, rigateurs conceive high potential ideas without employing “quantity breeds quality” generation methods such as brainstorming.

Find out why I reject brainstorming

The rigateur’s way in brief

• We are here to enrich the world. Our common purpose is being of service and creating that which generates value for others.
• We are fully equipped in mind, body and spirit for doing this work.
• The essence of a successful create-the-new project is a high potential idea derived from a vision of realised potential.
• The vision of realised potential and the high potential idea are brought forth by natural imagining (an activity), and not by synthetic imagination (an abstraction). Brainstorming and other contrived methods employ synthetic imagination.
• A high potential idea is conceived in the mind of a single individual, not in some fanciful group mind.
• Value is generated through the interaction between the value beneficiary (such as a customer or user) and the value generator (product, service, facility etc). View graphic
• Not only are upstream imagination and downstream value realisation equally important – they are inseparable.
• Rigateurs design create-the-new projects with the aim of generating value that is extensive (widespread) or exceptional (hard or impossible to acquire by other means).

The rigateur’s way in more detail

We are here to enrich the world. Our common purpose is being of service and creating that which generates value for others.

We are fully equipped in mind, body and spirit for doing this work.

Theories, frameworks, models, processes and methods do not create anything. The new comes into being through purposeful action.

This is exemplified by rigateurs deploying their rig – their natural-born create-the-new capability formed of two hemispheres (mind), seven powers (body) and one heart (spirit) – to create something that yields extensive or exceptional downstream value, thereby enriching the world.

Read more about the rig

Find out how I identified the seven powers

The essence of a successful create-the-new project is a high potential idea derived from a vision of realised potential.

A high potential idea, one that’s potent and fitting, is derived from a vision of realised potential. This is a depiction — an actual picture accompanied by a vivid and compelling synopsis — of how the world will look, sound and feel when the new creation exists in its finished state (even though you do not yet know what form it will take) and its value generation potential is being realised without constraint. A vision of realised potential is a value generation possibility given embryonic form as a picture with words.

The vision of realised potential and the high potential idea are brought forth by natural imagining (right hemisphere activity), not synthetic imagination (left hemisphere).

My understanding of the respective roles of the brain’s left and right hemispheres comes largely from the work of Iain McGilchrist, author of The Master and His Emissary and The Matter With Things. The writings of Jill Bolte Taylor and certain others provided further insights.

Natural imagining is deployed when undertaking imagination work. Synthetic imagination is deployed as part of conceptualisation work to develop the bare bones idea into a fleshed-out concept.

Read more about the two forms of imagination

A high potential idea is conceived in the mind of a single individual, not in some fanciful group mind.

Elaborating the bare bones idea may be a collaborative process, but conception is a solo act.

Explore further: The Idea-to-Concept Method

Rigateurs recognise three action modes that are essential to fruitful create-the-new work:

• Create alone.
• Create with others.
• Help others create.

Create-the-new action modes | Part 1: Theory
Create-the-new action modes | Part 2: Practice

They do not use “quantity breeds quality” methods such as brainstorming or one of its derivatives.

How many ideas does it actually take to arrive at a great one? In our experience, the answer is something on the order of 2,000. Yes, that’s a two with three zeros after it — 2,000-to-1. We call this the Idea Ratio.

Two Stanford Professors Explain How to Produce Hundreds of World-Changing Ideas In 1 Hour, by Jeremy Utley and Perry Klebahn, codirectors of executive education at Stanford’s Institute of Design (d-school)

Generating 2,000 ideas is rather like making 2,000 keys in the hope that one of them will fit the lock.

Rigateurs reject brainstorming, instead imagining a value generation possibility and then deploying the Idea-to-Concept method to conceive and develop a creation that will generate the imagined value.

Explore further

The Idea-to-Concept Method

Why I reject brainstorming

Value is generated through the interaction between the value beneficiary (such as a customer or user) and the value generator (product, service, facility etc).

A value generator is something tangible or intangible that generates value when the user interacts with it.

Some examples:

• Product
• Service
• Facility (this website, for instance)
• Event (conference, party, festival)
• Establishment (museum, theatre, restaurant)
• Infrastructure (railway station, railway line)
• Educational programme (course, seminar, workshop)
• Artistic work (book, song, musical composition, painting, theatrical production)

A conversation can also be a value generator.

Read about value co-creation

Not only are upstream imagination and downstream value realisation equally important — they are inseparable.

The next image shows the power of Imagination paired with the power of Realisation. The rigateur imagines the value that will be generated downstream and realises the value that was imagined upstream.

Rigateurs design create-the-new projects with the aim of generating value that is extensive (widespread) or exceptional (hard or impossible to acquire by other means).

Rigateurs consider the needs and interests of all potential beneficiaries.

Thinking about each beneficiary group in turn, they determine what new value might be generated, what existing value must be preserved, what anti-value generation must be halted, and what value must be sacrificed for the good of the whole.

Those suffering the loss of value may need some form of compensation. If nothing else, the loss must be acknowledged and the reasoning explained.

Explore further

How to specify the value your new creation is intended to generate

Might the work of a rigateur generate more value than that of a design thinker?

Design thinking is a form of human-centred design. Here, the human is the customer, user or other beneficiary.

The way of the rigateur is also human-centred, but in this case the designer is the one who is human.

If design thinkers were to become rigateurs, human centricity would be elevated to a higher plain.

Not only would greater value be generated for downstream beneficiaries, but the rigateurs would benefit also, experiencing greater meaning, joy and fulfilment as they go about their work.

Plugging the gaps in the generic design thinking framework

Note 1 Readiness work enables rigateurs to get upstream of the brief, immerse themselves in the project’s demands and dynamics, ensure that the project is consistent with the organisation’s purpose and strategy, and establish shared intent. This work goes far beyond empathising and defining.

Read more about Readiness work

Note 2 Rigateurs deploy the creative power of Imagination, involving the brain’s right hemisphere and natural imagining, whereas design thinking practitioners rely on Conceptualisation, involving the left hemisphere and synthetic imagination.

Read about Iain McGilchrist and his brain lateralisation hypothesis

Note 3 Design thinking is concerned only with upstream work – the early stages of a create-the-new project. Rigateurs start upstream (even upstream of the design thinker’s upstream) and stay with the project all the way through to the downstream realisation of value generation potential.

The five tests

The global innovation firm IDEO popularised the three lenses concept represented by the orange discs. The lenses are labelled Desirability (Will people want it?), Feasibility (Can we make it and market it?) and Viability (Do we have a sustainable business model?).

As well as expanding the scope of desirability, I have added a two further items:

Potency

• Does it (still) display the potential to generate extensive (widespread) or exceptional (hard or impossible to acquire by other means) value?

Fitting

• Is it (still) a good fit with the demands and dynamics of the project?
• Does it (still) meet the design specification?

I refer to the five items as tests rather than lenses. These should be conducted at key points throughout the project to ensure further investment in talent, time, money and so on is justified, to increase the odds of the end result generating maximum downsream value, and to safeguard the integrity of the project.

Other significant create-the-new approaches

Theory U / Presencing

Theory U is the theoretical foundation. Presencing is the practice.

Theory U is an awareness-based framework that guides individuals and groups through a U-shaped process of sensing, presencing and co-creating to enable profound systemic transformation.

The approach was developed during the 1990s by Otto Scharmer, a senior lecturer at MIT, and introduced to the world in 2007 with the publication of his book Theory U: Leading from the Future As it Emerges.

Otto Schamer is a co-founder of u-school for transformation.

The procedure

VoJ is Voice of Judgment, VoC is Voice of Cynicism, and VoF is Voice of Fear | Click on image or here to enlarge

The diagram does not depict a workshop format specifically, although the U procedure can certainly form the basis of a create-the-new workshop or ‘whole system in the room’ gathering.

Key capacities to cultivate

1. Holding the space: Listen to what life calls you to do, creating a safe and open environment for dialogue and shared exploration.

2. Observing (Open Mind): Suspend the Voice of Judgment and past cognitive schema. Attend to the current reality with a mind wide open. This means truly seeing the world outside your ‘bubble’ with fresh eyes.

3. Sensing (Open Heart): Suspend the Voice of Cynicism. Connect with your heart and see things as interconnected wholes, developing empathy for others and for the entire system. Go to the ‘places of most potential’ and listen deeply.

4. Presencing (Open Will): Suspend the Voice of Fear. This is the core threshold at the bottom of the U. It involves letting go of old habits, beliefs, and non-essentials (like a camel passing through the ‘eye of the needle’ after unloading its burdens) and opening yourself to your highest future possibility. In a place of stillness and reflection, you connect to a deeper source of inspiration and allow ‘inner knowing’ to emerge.

Some of the work underpinning Theory U

Theory U is informed by the work of Rudolf Steiner, W. Brian Arthur, Joseph Jaworski, Bernard Lievegoed and others.

The original U procedure was devised by Friedrich Glasl, an Austrian conflict researcher and organisational consultant best known for developing Glasl’s Nine-Stage Model of Conflict Escalation (pdf).

The earlier work by Glasl involved a sociotechnical, Goethean and anthroposophical process involving a few or many co-workers, managers and/or policymakers. It proceeded from phenomenological diagnosis of the present state of the organisation to plans for the future. They described a process in a U formation consisting of three levels (technical and instrumental subsystem, social subsystem and cultural subsystem) and seven stages beginning with the observation of organisational phenomena, workflows, resources etc., and concluding with specific decisions about desired future processes and phenomena. The method draws on the Goethean techniques described by Rudolf Steiner, transforming observations into intuitions and judgements about the present state of the organisation and decisions about the future. The three stages represent explicitly recursive reappraisals at progressively advanced levels of reflective, creative and intuitive insight and (epistemologies), thereby enabling more radically systemic intervention and redesign. The stages are: phenomena – picture (a qualitative metaphoric visual representation) – idea (the organising idea or formative principle) – and judgement (does this fit?). The first three then are reflexively replaced by better alternatives (new idea –> new image –> new phenomena) to form the design design [sic].

Source: Wikipedia – Theory U

According to Eugene Schwartz, the origin of the U-shaped form can be traced back to Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy.

Theory U draws its name from the U-shaped form that appears throughout [Otto Scharmer’s book Theory U: Leading from the Future As it Emerges]. The form is, of course, familiar to students of Rudolf Steiner as the curve that traces the human soul’s descent into matter and its eventual ascent to the spirit in the course of a single lifetime. In Scharmer’s hands it takes on myriad meanings, all of them emblematic of the transformative experiences that organizations—and the human beings who shape the organizations and are in turn shaped by them—must undergo to become viable entities.

Eugene Schwartz, Anthroposophy and Waldorf Education: Of Prophets and Profits — A Review of Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges, by C. Otto Scharmer | This is no longer available online so please contact me if you would like to receive it as a Word document

Should the U be an arch?

I have much respect for Otto Scharmer and am reluctant to say anything negative about Theory U, which is artfully conceived, superbly articulated and globally employed.

However, I find the U figure misleading as the connection to Source would, in my view, be better depicted as an upward motion towards the heavens (“ascent to the spirit”) rather than a downward one towards terra firma (“descent into matter”).

Metaphors convey meaning, visual ones included, and I contend that people in the western world typically situate ‘Heaven’ above their heads and ‘Earth’ beneath their feet.

But this is a minor quibble and even if Otto Scharmer wanted to invert the U, the ramifications would make it close to impossible.

Explore further

Design thinking

10 Insightful Design Thinking Frameworks: A Quick Overview, by Rikke Friis Dam and Teo Yu Siang, on Interaction Design Foundation website

Design Thinking 101, by Sarah Gibbons, on Nielsen Norman Group website

Design thinking was supposed to fix the world. Where did it go wrong? by Rebecca Ackermann in MIT Technology Review

Design thinking — Wikipedia

IDEO Design Thinking

Theory U

Leading from the Future: A new social technology for our times, by Otto Scharmer, on Systems Thinker website

Theory U: Leading from the Future As it Emerges, by Otto Scharmer

u-school for transformation

u-school: Methods and Tools for Social Transformation — highly recommended

Wikipedia — Theory U

Rigateur

Examine a typical create-the-new project from start to finish

The Idea-to-Concept Method

Readiness work sets the create-the-new project in motion

The rig explained in 36 slides

The rig, our natural-born create-the-new capability, explained

Site Index

Search the site

Not case sensitive. Do not to hit return.