Sustainable Innovation: 5 Questions Every Company Should Ask Itself
In his book ‘The Way to Design,” Steve Vassalo quotes John Arnold, who taught a course at Stanford in the early ‘60s called ‘How to Ask a Question’: “Each of man’s advances was started by a question….Knowing what questions to ask and how to ask them is sometimes more important than the eventual answers.”
When it comes to new products and services, this design-based approach is reflected in the search for the intersection of desirability (do people want it?), feasibility (is it technologically and organizationally possible?) and viability (is it financially viable?). Tim Brown of IDEO called the process required to reach this sweet spot design thinking: “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.” . . .