My favourite article about Design Thinking is an article called "Innovation as a Learning Process: Embedding Design Thinking" which describes the fundamental principles of design and defines the relationship between innovation and design. The article has been published already in 2007 and it has just received the Accenture Award of the California Management Review.

This award is given each year to the authors of the article published in the preceding volume of the California Management Review that has made the most important contribution to improving the practice of management.

About the Article

In their article, Beckman and Barry outline four core elements of design thinking — observation, framing, imperatives (needs or design principles), and solutions.
They ground these elements of design thinking in models of how people learn, describing which learning style is best suited to each element of design thinking. By doing so, they provide a model for achieving innovation among members of a team with different learning styles. Their model can be applied across a wide range of sectors, from hardware and software products to services to architecture.

"The innovation process as a learning model suggests that teams be composed of individuals who are polar opposites in how they take in and transform information," Beckman and Barry write. They add, "Good teams behave like bicycle racing teams, where individuals are assigned positions in the race because of their strengths, not because of seniority or some other measure."

And here is a video that summarizes the core ideas from the article. This is also an excellent example how you can condense information from a 30 page article into a compelling 5 minute video.

Innovation as a Learning Process from Roger Shealy on Vimeo.

The best about this award is that the article is now available as a free download, so you can access it even if you don’t usually have access to the California Management Review.

Download it for free, it’s a must read.