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Hi Jude, In response to your original query, we at Design and Culture have been grappling with "design thinking" as well. Starting with our December, 2011 issue we are publishing a two-part essay "Rethinking Design Thinking." The articles, written by Lucy Kimbell (Associate Fellow, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford and director of consultancy at Fieldstudio, London). As she sees it, although "much of the recent public presentation of design thinking is tied to one design consultancy, IDEO (Brown 2008; Brown 2009; Brown and Wyatt 2010), the history of design thinking is more complex." She goes on to link the problem with "design's fragmented core." I'm pasting the abstract below, Regards, Elizabeth Elizabeth Guffey http://elizabethguffey.blogspot.com Juanita and Joseph Leff Distinguished Professor Art And Design History Purchase College State University of New York Founding Editor Design and Culture Rethinking Design Thinking Lucy Kimbell Abstract The term design thinking has gained considerable attention over the past decade in a wide range of organizations and contexts beyond the traditional preoccupations of designers. The main idea is that the ways professional designers problem solve is of value to firms trying to innovate and to societies trying to make change happen. This paper reviews the origins of the term design thinking in research on designers and its adoption by management educators and consultancies within a dynamic, global mediatized economy. Three main accounts are identified: design thinking as a cognitive style, as a general theory of design, and as a resource for organizations. The paper then argues there are several issues that undermine the claims made for design thinking. The first is how many of these accounts rely on a dualism between thinking and knowing, and acting in the world. Second, the idea of a generalized design thinking ignores the diversity of designers' practices and institutions which are historically situated. The third is how design thinking rests on theories of design that privilege the designer as the main agent in designing. Instead the paper proposes that attending to the situated, embodied routines of designers and others offers a useful way to rethink design thinking. Keywords Design thinking, practices, designers, innovation, organization design Biog Lucy Kimbell is Associate Fellow, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford and director of consultancy at Fieldstudio, London. She has taught design practices to MBA students since 2005, having previously taught interaction design at the Royal College of Art, London. Her main focus is designing services in the context of public policy. [log in to unmask]