Design Thinking for Leaders

Leadership and Business Management October 25, 2025
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Introduction

**Design Thinking** is a human-centered approach to innovation that is crucial for solving 'wicked' problems and creating truly novel products, services, or internal processes. This immersive course teaches leaders how to move past analytical processes to embrace empathy, experimentation, and iterative prototyping. Participants will gain practical experience navigating the five-stage **Design Thinking** process—Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test—applying it to real business challenges. The program is specifically tailored to show leaders how to foster a culture of creative collaboration and reduce the risk of large-scale failure by making innovation a repeatable, disciplined process.

Objectives

Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to:

  • Apply the five core phases of the **Design Thinking** process to complex organizational problems.
  • Master empathy techniques to deeply understand customer needs, pain points, and unstated desires.
  • Lead effective brainstorming sessions using creative techniques to generate a wide volume of non-obvious ideas.
  • Develop low-fidelity prototypes (physical or digital) rapidly and iteratively for quick feedback.
  • Challenge assumptions and embrace the 'fail fast, fail cheap' mindset of effective experimentation.
  • Translate human insights into a clear, focused, and actionable problem definition ('How Might We' statements).
  • Structure and lead a cross-functional team through the complete **Design Thinking** cycle.
  • Foster a culture of curiosity, experimentation, and psychological safety essential for creativity.

Target Audience

  • Senior Leaders and Directors responsible for innovation and growth
  • R&D, Product Management, and Marketing Leaders
  • Internal Consultants and Business Process Improvement Specialists
  • Anyone leading cross-functional teams tasked with complex problem-solving
  • Change Agents seeking new methods for organizational transformation

Methodology

  • Immersive, hands-on workshop guiding teams through a complete **Design Thinking** challenge (Empathize to Test).
  • Fieldwork assignments conducting 'empathy interviews' or user observation.
  • Group brainstorming sessions using structured creative ideation techniques (e.g., **SCAMPER**).
  • Individual exercises creating a low-fidelity prototype and testing script.
  • Case studies demonstrating how **Design Thinking** transformed products or services in different industries.

Personal Impact

  • Mastery of a human-centered, disciplined process for driving innovation.
  • Enhanced creative problem-solving and brainstorming facilitation skills.
  • Improved ability to truly empathize with customers and understand their latent needs.
  • Increased personal confidence in leading experimentation and calculated risk-taking.
  • Acquisition of a unique skillset valued for product development and strategic innovation.
  • Better communication and collaboration with R&D, design, and marketing teams.

Organizational Impact

  • Accelerated innovation cycles and faster time-to-market for new products and services.
  • Reduced risk of major failure through continuous, cheap, and early user testing.
  • Development of solutions that truly meet customer needs, increasing adoption and market success.
  • A highly engaged and creative workforce empowered to contribute to innovation.
  • Improved collaboration across functional silos through shared problem-solving methods.
  • A sustainable culture of human-centered inquiry and experimentation.

Course Outline

Unit 1: The Foundations of Design Thinking

Section 1: Mindset and Process
  • Defining **Design Thinking** and its central focus on human-centered innovation
  • The five core phases: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test
  • Contrasting **Design Thinking** with traditional, linear analytical problem-solving
  • The importance of ambiguity, non-judgment, and deferring critique in the process

Unit 2: Empathize and Define: Understanding the User

Section 1: Human-Centered Insight
  • Mastering ethnographic research techniques (observation, deep interviewing) for user empathy
  • Utilizing Empathy Maps and Persona development to synthesize user insights
  • Identifying user needs, latent needs, and underlying 'jobs to be done'
  • Translating insights into clear, actionable, and human-centered problem statements ('How Might We')

Unit 3: Ideate: Generating Creative Solutions

Section 1: Divergent Thinking
  • Leading structured, high-volume brainstorming sessions that enforce divergent thinking
  • Applying creative generation techniques (e.g., SCAMPER, crazy 8s) to break conventional thinking
  • Strategies for creating psychological safety to ensure all ideas, regardless of quality, are shared
  • Techniques for quickly clustering, synthesizing, and prioritizing generated ideas

Unit 4: Prototype and Test: Learning Through Doing

Section 1: Experimentation and Feedback
  • Principles of 'low-fidelity' prototyping: rapid, cheap, and disposable methods
  • Techniques for developing a **Minimum Viable Product (MVP)** and testing key assumptions
  • Mastering feedback sessions: asking non-leading questions and observing user behavior
  • Embracing the 'fail fast, fail cheap' philosophy to de-risk innovation efforts

Unit 5: Leading the Design Thinking Culture

Section 1: Institutionalizing Innovation
  • Strategies for integrating **Design Thinking** into existing organizational processes (e.g., project lifecycle)
  • Building and leading effective, cross-functional innovation teams and workshops
  • The leader's role in removing bureaucratic barriers to prototyping and experimentation
  • Measuring the success of **Design Thinking** efforts (e.g., idea pipeline, market success)

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