DESIGN THINKING

Design Thinking is a project, product, or service design process centered on the user. It is a particularly useful approach for problem-solving and fostering innovation. Design Thinking has evolved alongside other similar processes, such as Lean approaches and agile project management, with which it shares many principles. What these approaches have in common is that they break away from linear project-management practices, where everything must be defined upfront before the project begins, with a fixed team, a predefined implementation plan, a fixed budget, and anticipated outcomes.

Design Thinking, by contrast, is built on an iterative approach, offering greater flexibility and agility in the face of project complexity and uncertainty, and mobilizing the necessary expertise as the process unfolds, often relying on the principles of collective intelligence. This approach continuously questions project assumptions throughout implementation to detect biases or shifts in how the problem or context is analyzed. Through the progressive validation of proposed solutions, Design Thinking helps redefine the scope of a project by focusing on the elements that concretely address the intended objectives.

Facing sustainability challenges, companies, local authorities, and associations use Design Thinking to propose solutions to the risks and impacts of their activities on the social, environmental, or governance dimensions of our economy.

Within the fields of development cooperation, sustainable finance transformation, or support to high-impact entrepreneurship, Design Thinking adds value to projects across the following components:

• Clarifying problems: this process helps clarify the specific challenges related to sustainable development within the context of each project, providing a localized interpretation of global issues.
• Understanding needs: project teams gain a deeper understanding of the needs of target communities and ecosystems, enabling them to design new solutions that are genuinely beneficial and aligned with current sustainability and inclusion challenges.
• Generating innovative ideas: while traditional approaches have proven useful, new “recipes” are sometimes needed to tackle the complex problems of our century. Design Thinking helps avoid trend-driven solutions and encourages plural, context-sensitive solutions that address the various dimensions of a problem.
• Concrete experimentation: the iterative approach to piloting solutions helps capitalize on learnings to assess real impacts and identify potential rebound effects of solutions that may “look good on paper.” This allows project teams to optimize impact before scaling up implementation.
• Collaboration and engagement: through its inclusive, user-centered approach, Design Thinking accelerates community engagement and ownership of the solutions, while also fostering partnerships that sustain results beyond the project’s lifetime.

Implementing Design Thinking processes reassures decision-makers about the possible and necessary transformations, while offering project owners valuable flexibility to optimize their impact. This is particularly useful given the complexity of current challenges and the growing uncertainty linked to risks, as Design Thinking supports an innovation-driven approach rooted in continuous improvement of performance and impact