Design Thinking in Consulting: How to Sustain Your Success in the IT Consulting Space

Consulting is an Art, not a Science - Design on the other hand is beyond Art; it’s about pragmatic compromise, not perfection. Design Thinking in literal terms means thinking as a designer would.

Design Thinking as a method is empirical in the sense that it is both experimental and experiential. However, like all methods, it’s not what it is but what you do with it that counts!

Design Thinking is an approach to innovation that is powerful, effective and broadly accessible, which can be integrated into all aspects of products, services, business and society.

Design Thinking in Consulting is structured in three parts along the lines of Roger Martin’s ‘Knowledge Funnel’ moving from Mystery to Heuristic to Algorithm.

Part I Consulting

Overview of Consulting with a specific focus on Consulting Spectrum and Consulting Cycle for the purpose of this book - The Mystery.

Part II Design Thinking

Introduction to Design Thinking, the various schools of thought, approaches, tools and techniques analyzed and articulated as a matrix of Principles vs Practices for the purpose of this book - The Heuristic.

Part III Design Thinking in Consulting

In separate chapters for each of the Consulting Phases, the above Design Thinking Principles and Practices are evaluated to be fit for purpose and further extrapolated to relevant segments of the Consulting Spectrum for the purpose of this book - The Algorithm.