Who we are
ThisIsDesignThinking.net was started in 2015 and is the first website dedicated to examine design thinking adoption in organisations. The blog is managed by an international network of editors-in-chief who contribute articles or advice authors. Some of our authors have been design thinking practitioners for many years. Others are new to and rather skeptical about the phenomenon. What unites every contributor on this site is the effort to better understand the relevance of design thinking for contemporary organizations and the how’s and why’s of its success or failure.
Karen von Schmieden and Jan Schmiedgen curate the blog: they extend the network and maintain the website. They are supported by Kokoro Kuroiwa and Kyurie Shin. Initially, the website was set up to publish case studies and stories collected in the biggest study on design thinking adoption in recent years, conducted within the Hasso Plattner Design Thinking Research Program by Jan Schmiedgen, Eva Köppen, Holger Rhinow, and Christoph Meinel (student support: Birga Schlottmann, and Lea Spille). By now, it has developed into an international and independent project.
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The Curatorial Team
Jan Schmiedgen
Karen von Schmieden
Kokoro Kuroiwa
Lead Curation & Concept Development
Lead Curation & Network Relations
Editorial Support
Kyurie Shin
Tom Beckmann
Editorial Support
Technical Administration
The curatorial team is partly funded by the Hasso Plattner Design Thinking Research Program and the HPI Potsdam.
Our Authors
| Author | Latest Post | |
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Jan is a passionate innovation researcher and strategist. He trains and advises organizations in large-scale change by design. ( 46 stories published ) | IBM: Design Thinking Adaptation and Adoption at Scale Taking Risks, Earning Trust and Including Co-Workers: User-Centred Design at Deutsche Bahn Operations Reinventing Solar Energy Supply for Rural Africa The Rise & Fall of Design Thinking at Oticon The Link between Data Triangulation and Brainstorming Facilitation: Design Thinking at AirBnB From Stories and Metrics How Clalit Innovation used design thinking to develop a COVID-19 onboarding kit |
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Holger ist holding a scholarship from the HPI-Stanford Design Thinking Research Program. As a program manager for the HPI Academy, Holger is designing and teaching formats for executive education. ( 1 stories published ) | Starting Up with Design Thinking: The Story of LinkedIn’s Pulse |
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Eva is co-founder of Politics for Tomorrow and partner at kompea. She is an expert in Human-Centered Design and works in various fields. As a freelancer she is affiliated with Zero360 Innovation. ( 9 stories published ) | Three Good Reasons for Turning to Design in Germany’s Public Policy |
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Jan is a passionate innovation researcher and strategist. He trains and advises organizations in large-scale change by design. ( 6 stories published ) | IBM: Design Thinking Adaptation and Adoption at Scale |
| How Design Thinking Enabled MLP to Speak the Customer’s Language | ||
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Timon Schinke is a Design Thinking-Coach, lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences (HTW) Berlin and the co-founder of the »Berliner Ideenlabor«, a innovation consultancy with a strong focus on creativity. ( 1 stories published ) | One Project Changes the Organization: The Case of Derdack |
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Axel is research associate at the HPI School of Design Thinking and member of the HPI - Stanford Design Thinking Research Program. He observes design teams and addresses the question of how knowledge handling in Design Thinking can be supported. Axel holds a diploma in cultural management and is as well alumnus of the HPI D-School. ( 1 stories published ) | Ericsson’s Innova System |
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Elina is a design thinking evangelist who has worked in the European Aviation Safety Agency. Currently she is the editor and curator of Airport Hub & Passenger eXperience and a freelance consultant on passenger experience in air travel. ( 1 stories published ) | Design Thinking at Citrix – An Interview with Julie Baher |
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Dana is a design thinking facilitator and digital strategy consultant with expertise launching online products in museums and education startups. ( 1 stories published ) | Embedding Design Thinking in Museums |
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June Gwee is Principal Researcher and Faculty Member at the Civil Service College, Singapore. Her research interests include the creative industries, strategy, innovation and narrative techniques. ( 1 stories published ) | Redesigning Employment Pass Application in Singapore |
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Sabine Junginger is Visiting Professor of Design at the School of Design at Jiangnan University in China and at Macromedia University of Applied Sciences. She was appointed Associate Professor at the Design School Kolding in 2012 after receiving her academic tenure from Lancaster University, where she taught and conducted research from 2007 through 2012. She has advised government initiatives (Mindlab, Denmark; DesignGov, Australia) and design initiatives (dt:transfer) and is a member of Politics for Tomorrow, an initiative focused on bridging design theory and practice with policy-making and policy implementation. ( 1 stories published ) | Early Approaches: The US Tax Forms Simplification Project |
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Jeanne M. Liedtka is a faculty member at the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business and former chief learning officer at United Technologies Corporation, where she was responsible for overseeing all activities associated with corporate learning and development for the Fortune 50 corporation. ( 1 stories published ) | How an Improved Food Service Creates a Better Life Quality for Elderly People |
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Dr. Moritz Gekeler is the founder and CEO of Dolaborate GmbH, a small innovation consultancy based in Berlin. He helps companies implement design thinking into their strategies, their organizational processes and into individual projects. Before Moritz worked as a Senior design strategist for the Design and Co-Innovation Center of SAP. He was a program manager at the HPI D-School, worked for the HPI Academy and did futures research and innovation facilitation for Daimler. ( 1 stories published ) | Enabling Collaboration – Seven Tips For Facilitators |
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Caroline is a social neuroscientist spending most of her time in the world of Design Thinking, co-creation and innovation. She researches at the Max-Planck-Institute for Human Development and the Berlin School of Mind and Brain, lectures at the HPI School of Design Thinking and consults a range of companies and institutions on innovation practices. ( 1 stories published ) | Reinventing Solar Energy Supply for Rural Africa |
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Karen is a social scientist and journalist. She studied Political and Cultural Studies and European Studies on Society, Science and Technology in Maastricht, Istanbul, and Lisbon. ( 7 stories published ) | Building Trust with Prototypes: An IoT solution at Piller |
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Mauro is a multi-talented Brazilian designer with focus on motion and service design. He is one of the co-founders of Boana – a product design studio for software. Prior to Boana, he has worked as in-house designer at Telekom Innovation Labs and at SAP supporting projects on research, visual, service and product design in different contexts and countries like Germany, Oman, Kenya, Brazil, Bulgaria and the U.S.A. ( 1 stories published ) | Designing Learning Environments |
| Melina Costa is a co-founder of the innovation consulting firm Coaeva. A journalist by training, she has worked in Brazil's leading newsrooms, interviewing global leaders and investigating business models. ( 1 stories published ) | A Tough Crowd: Using Design Thinking to Help Traditional German Butchers | |
| Jo'Anne Langham has qualifications in journalism and economic psychology. She is a human-centred designer and researcher with over 20 years experience in product and services design. Her focus is on improving the design of citizen centric services and making it easy for everyone to comply. ( 1 stories published ) | Failure to Launch: Learning About Design the Hard Way | |
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Kevin Kajitani is passionate about improving the world through new business ecosystem models that aim to close socio-economic gaps around the world. After graduating with Summa Cum Laude honors from the University of Washington with a degree in Aeronautics & Astronautics, Kevin worked as an aerodynamics engineer in the US before relocating to Japan. He now works in the Digital Design Lab at All Nippon Airways (ANA) as a innovation researcher. ( 1 stories published ) |
Be rebellious! How ANA is Utilizing Design Thinking to Connect its Past with its Future |
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David Hoyt has written over 100 case studies for the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Previously, he was an executive at companies, both publicly-traded and start-up, that manufacture sophisticated scientific instruments. ( 1 stories published ) | Comfortable with Feeling Uncomfortable: Innovation at the San Francisco Opera |
| Protected: Theoretical Foundations of Design Thinking Part I: John E. Arnold’s Creative Thinking Theories | ||
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Marc-Alexander Winter is the founder and Managing Director of SERVITIZE UG, a consultancy. Marc holds a degree in economics and is an alumnus of the HPI Certification program. |
B2B Design Thinking: Product Innovation when the User is a Network |
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Kokoro studied law in Tokyo. She worked on design thinking projects at HPI School of Design Thinking in Potsdam and Innovation & Entrepreneurship projects as a University Innovation Fellow at Stanford University Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. ( 3 stories published ) |
How Clalit Innovation used design thinking to develop a COVID-19 onboarding kit |
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Curiosity and Freestyle: Redesigning the In-Flight Meal Experience | |
| Umpqua – Slow Banking: Building a Community Experience | ||
| Lost in Transformation? Three pragmatic and evidence-based leadership lessons | ||
Our Editors
The stories and contributions to this website are curated by different – mostly academic – institutions with a deep expertise on design thinking. Every institution has an independent circle of volunteer editors and authors (usually graduate students, PhD’s, young professionals), which are supervised by an editor-in-chief (usually faculty staff).
Editors-in-Chief: Karen von Schmieden, Jan Schmiedgen
Main Contributor: Jeanne Liedtka
Main Contributor: Lars Groeger
Editor-in-Chief: Lorelle Bell
Editor-in-Chief: Miikka Lehtonen
Editor-in-Chief: Natalie W. Nixon
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