Ken and Chuck - Thanks for the tip to the article. Toronto has a significant IBM office and presence, as well as an annual technology conference (CASCON) they host https://www-927.ibm.com/ibm/cas/cascon/ 

OCAD U's Strategic Foresight and Innovation program has drawn a few of their best UX designers, and then they tend to leave for more independent, creative pastures after completing our degree. http://www.ocadu.ca/academics/graduate-studies/strategic-foresight-and-innovation.htm Experienced IBMers have actually been through practice transformations before. Their boast of "hiring 1000 designers" seems to me just a brute force market move and not a thoughtful business strategy at all. Design practices do not diffuse by push or volume into business operations.  They diffuse by socialization, which takes time but is highly resilient and connected across service lines. I wrote a business case study backed by a bit o' structuration theory on this process of design skill infusion in We Tried to Warn You (2008, http://www.amazon.com/Tried-Warn-You-Innovations-organization/dp/1934840513

In nearly every large company where I've worked or consulted, I've either been an early or first UX/HF/human-centered design advisor. And whenever I've seen designers forced into an organization, especially when they are "privileged" actors given special work freedoms and "room for creativity" the enterprise has failed. Design interests and outcomes within a product/service organization are not separable from business goals, and these are negotiated. In the new design thinking world, as we've done since the mid-90's anyway, product managers and customer representatives in the company become design literate and attend research, participate in workshops. A few good designers, building relationships in a team-based practice, makes all the difference. 1000 designers? It doesn't even make sense as a strategy. There are so many types of creative and research skills, it quickly become pluralized beyond design. And this privileging of "design thinking" as a skill base strategy suggests a Hail Mary pass approach. Anyway, we shall see. It takes a village to "create sustainable services for clients loved by their customers." 

I do take issue with our flagellating ourselves (educators) and wearing sackcloth over the designing and advancement of education programs. Every graduate design program I know of now has become uniquely adapted to a context and a value proposition.  We developed the MDes in Strategic Foresight and Innovation in 2008-09 and it’s the most popular grad program at Canada's largest design school. We are starting Canada's first healthcare design program, launching in 2016, also innovative in structure and pedagogy http://www.ocadu.ca/academics/graduate-studies/design-for-health.htm

I've visited Tongji, worked with Oslo's AHO and HIOA design programs, know Case Weatherhead's program, have had good fun with Potsdam's d.school community, and these are all doing innovative, future-adaptive work. I'm impressed with the new CMU grad program, the Stamps Integrative Design at Michigan, the re-energized CCS in Detroit with Cincinnati DAAP's Sooshin Choi and now Paul Pangaro, a cybernetics expert heading their IxD program.  There's the old Top Ten: IIT/ID, DAAP, Pratt Art Center, Parsons, SVA, CCA, etc. and they are all actively inventing. What's not to love? We are all redesigning design education. It just takes little time to get people and program moving.

Best regards, and safe wishes wherever you may be traveling in these edgy times - 

Peter



-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Friedman [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: November 14, 2015 1:47 PM
Subject: Re: Design Thinking at IBM

Dear Chuck,

Thanks for the link. I read this earlier today and sent the link to several colleagues. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/15/business/ibms-design-centered-strategy-to-set-free-the-squares.html

You raise an interesting and important question: “Why not apply design thinking to research and education concerning design itself? We need to modernize our practices as much as IBM.”

On one hand, I agree with you. On the other, I understand why doing this is difficult, perhaps impossible.


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