Empathy and the Business of Innovation

In case you haven't seen it, allow me to point you to this great Bruce Nussbaum article about design thinking.  "All the B-school-educated managers you hire won't automatically get you the outside-the-box thinking you need to build new brands -- or create new experiences for old brands," Nussbaum says.

"The truth is we're moving from a knowledge economy that was dominated by technology into an experience economy controlled by consumers and the corporations who empathize with them."

Amen, brother.

Comments

[Ryan Jacoby]

Thanks for posting Diego. When I read that the economy will be controlled by "consumers and the corporations who empathize with them" that sounds right to me, but the implementation of that seems harder to grasp (especially when I read the rest of the bweek section). But I wonder: who is responsible for design, and thus who is responsible for empathy? The easy answer is everybody and the scary answer is nobody. The ODMs and Contract Manufacturers seem to think they are responsible for innovation, but consumers don't even know who they are. I recognize the bias of these articles and this comment is consumer electronics, but is it different for other CPG, durable goods, or enterprise-focused products? As a consumer, who am I talking to and who is really listening?