The Challenges of Meeting the Terms of Sustainability and Multiple Stakeholders in a Design Process that Emanates from the Methodology of Design Thinking

Abstract: As a repercussion of the ongoing climate crisis and the emerging system of stakeholder capitalism, organizations are required to take responsibility for their businesses throughout their entire value creation chain. To meet the demands of their stakeholders, companies must review among others, their business models, culture, trust, and approach towards innovations that meet the terms of sustainability. This thesis aims to investigate what needs to be included in a design process that emanates from the methodology of design thinking to ensure that multiple stakeholders are being considered. Furthermore, the thesis also sets out to review what key deliverables need to be validated in order to create sustainable innovations. Insights are drawn from related work, observations and interviews with employees at an innovation and design bureau who are engaged in creating sustainable solutions for organizations that are looking to transform themselves into becoming more sustainable. This thesis identifies gaps in an innovation bureau’s design process that prevent employees to include multiple stakeholders and the perspective of sustainability. A recommendation of a new design process has been developed to enable innovation bureaus to include multiple stakeholders in a structured manner in order to create and validate sustainable innovations. This thesis uses EY Doberman as a Use Case to identify the obstacles and requisites for involving sustainability and other stakeholders than the end-consumer in a design process that is sprung out of the methodology of design thinking.