For business leaders, the struggle between efficiency and innovation is constant. How do businesses meet their customers’ needs while also developing new and improved products and services? And how do you avoid letting people’s biases and entrenched behaviors get in the way?

In the article “Why Design Thinking Works” from the September-October 2018 issue of Harvard Business Review, author Jeanne Liedtka of the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business writes: “the structure of design thinking creates a natural flow from research to rollout.”

She explains how this clear process helps teams break free of a variety of human tendencies that get in the way of innovation. “Most humans are driven by a fear of mistakes, so they focus more on preventing errors than on seizing opportunities,” she writes. “They opt for inaction rather than action when a choice risks failure. But there is no innovation without action—so psychological safety is essential. The physical props and highly formatted tools of design thinking deliver that sense of security, helping would-be innovators move more assuredly through the discovery of customer needs, idea generation, and idea testing.

In this episode, we bring you the narrated version of Liedtka’s article.

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