Is Design Thinking Conservative?

Let’s blame the practitioners, not the tools

Photo: Copyright Morten Falch Sortland/Getty Images

In the September 2018 issue of Harvard Business Review, NYU professor Natasha Iskander argues that design thinking is “fundamentally conservative and preserves the status quo.” She gives several reasons for this claim, including:

• Design thinking is poorly defined as a methodology.
• It’s a marketing ploy for expensive consultants.
• It’s a new name for an old method.
• It fundamentally privileges designers and other elites who keep the power over the creative process.

The author and David Colby Reed ponder: “Is design thinking just some creative conservative conspiracy to preserve the status quo?”

Ok. You got me. I am a (sometimes expensive) consultant who teaches and facilitates design thinking. I think Natasha has some valid points, but I also think that it is helpful to reframe the question:

Is design thinking fundamentally conservative? Or have conservative institutions simply caught on to design thinking?

Design thinking as a Trojan horse

The following scenario is a pattern that I often see in my work: