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RMB – a division of FirstRand Bank Limited, is an Authorised Financial Services and Credit Provider NCRCP20.
Copyright © RMB 2026. All rights reserved.
We have all experienced it: walk into a brainstorming session energized, ready change the world and be a problem solver. The session starts, the mandate is given – come up with an innovative solution/product that meets “x” number of business requirements or use “y” technology because competitors have. And we are off – technology buzzwords are thrown around, alliances are developed, alliances are broken, the “we cannots” and “we will nots” say their piece, the organizational purists demand that standard problem-solving protocols are adhered to, whiteboards are filled with elaborate diagrams, Post-its are “parked” and tempers flare. A few hours later, we emerge frustrated and drained with no tangible actions and, more than likely, even more confused as to what we were meant to solve.
Don’t get me wrong, while this may be a hugely generalized summary of a “let’s-innovate-and-change-the-business” session, it is not easy to come up with innovative and business changing solutions/ideas.
Enter design thinking. While not a panacea, it differs from most problem-solving techniques by taking a human-centered perspective. It was first popularized by Ideo whose CEO, Tim Brown, has defined it as:
”…a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.”
The process is split into five phases:
This approach allows design thinkers to be genuinely curious about the needs of the end client/human, visualize ideas and then experiment with these ideas iteratively to create an innovative solution.
A great example of how design thinking can transform a business is how Airbnb turned their failing business around. In 2009, the start-up had flatlined and revenue was hovering at $200 per week. One afternoon, the founders decided to understand the customer journey and actually use their site (Empathize). While looking at a popular destination’s listings, they noticed a similarity between all 40 listings — the photos sucked (Define). People were using their camera phones to take pictures or reusing images from classified sites, so customers couldn’t really see what they were paying for.
They decided try a crazy and completely non-technical solution to the problem – jump on a flight, rent a camera, spend some time at the listings and replace the low-resolution pictures with clearer high resolution photos (Ideate and Prototype). Within a week, improving the pictures resulted in doubling revenue to $400 per week (Test).
Fast forward to the present, Airbnb has turned into a billion-dollar company and is considered one of the biggest hotel companies in the world. They have baked design thinking into their organization and culture, pushing employees to be “pirates” and experiment with creative concepts as well as to always understand the customer journey (e.g. everybody who joins the company, regardless of position, is required to take a trip during their onboarding and share their experience with the entire company).
Often because we have been habitually developing products/services and churning through business-as-usual activities we, as the owners of the products and services, believe we have it all figured out and know what needs to be done. While design thinking is not a quick fix or a solution to all problems faced by organizations today, it does have its place in the modern enterprise and is a great approach to understanding our clients — the humans who use our products and services.
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