The Backside of the Loop: Design Thinking as a Strategic Resource For Change

Strategy and organizational management are increasingly more sophisticated, but to survive and thrive in a competitive landscape is still an elusive skill set for organizations. Through a review of literature, this paper contains a brief history of strategy and the different schools of formation and formulation of strategy. It then contrasts two different organizational capabilities, strategic thinking and design thinking, in order to explain how they fit together and their value to organizations. By using two concepts, adaptive cycles and organizational ecocycles, to explore the life stages of organizations, this paper explains the necessity of creative management and design thinking as a resource for change. While business administration is used to stabilize and formalize organizational processes, design thinking can be used to disrupt old processes and empower emergent innovations. Finally, this paper argues that design thinking as a resource must be protected and handled strategically in order to be effective