Thursday, April 4, 2013

Signs of failure of design thinking in the present economy

In spite of a well-organized design thinking strategy projects often goes to failure due to unpredictable user resistance that cannot be accessed by stakeholders. This fact is commonly accepted by a large majority of design firms in every vertical of the industry. Scholars have been advocating the importance of accepting and celebrating failure in the corporate world to rebound with success.

Encourage people in taking risk seems to be a positive change however the possibility of exploration would continue to increase has the mass consumer market dismantle. Keeping track of success and failure would become irrelevant considering the unique character of each business cases. User resistance factors are increasingly volatile and cluttered.

The three factors that would make business exploration and assessment increasingly complex and expensive are:
  • The end of mass consumption and mass culture.
  • The spread of specific technological solutions at every end of industry
  • The development of emerging markets that would grow the overall amount of consumers and form new clusters.
In that context; corporate companies are required to make a large amount of live test projects, equips themselves with assessment process and develop generic business development solution.





That ecosystem would require a symbiotic relationship between consumer and producer which clearly announce the era of ‘prosumerism’.

End of mass consumer trends to assess the market

In the past decade, we have seen the media industry metamorphosed by entrepreneur journalist of all kind. The development of blogs, social network and unstructured reporting disassembled the news and media industry forcing then in moving from the print to digital format with even more targeted content. The entertainment and musical industry had to run competition with Google, YouTube, Torrent and other video sites who give the chance to anyone to become a user and a creator. Those very few examples prove that content and creation become accessible to all and that the world is getting empowered not by corporate but people who individually create with different level of professionalism. Technology is responsible for the democratization of information in terms of viewing as well as creation.

Since 2008 the number of things connected to the internet exceeds the number of people. By 2020 they will be 50 billion of things connected to the internet. By 2012, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire internet in 2008 - Source Cisco

How long would it take for a typical household to become a micro-industry who create replicate and network values of all kinds. Technologies like 3D printing are on the way of democratization  It gives a chance to contemporary artisan to manufacture their creations without complex outsource. Today lots of people convert their passion into livelihood through the internet. As the rate of unemployment continues to grow, people will continue searching alternatives to the streamline economy. Small scale initiative have the advantage of been socially integrated, flexible and highly personal which allow closeness to the needs of targeted market segmentation. Business and society have the interest in encouraging people in their endeavor of value creation; by providing business platforms to streamline their interest into economic reality.