CREATING AND DELIVERING VALUEWITH DESIGN THINKING IN TECHNOLOGY DESIGN

Abstract: In all industries, the global competition has expanded the needs to reform businesses in   orderto stay ahead of competition. All organizations have to find ways to work with complex problems and big challenges concerning the understanding of the present and intuiting the future. Also they should be prepared to see what will come next to the market and if this challenges their current position. Interestingly, a concept called Design Thinking intends to provide one way to work with these demanding issues. Even though the concept has relatively scarce study basis concerning its empirical usage and also critique towards it exists, it has an emerging interest while several companies are adapting the concept in their operations on a growing basis. Interestingly, this concept is proposed to be applicable also in technology design activities in a supplier-­‐customer relationship. Hence, this study is conducted to discover what is the empirical foundation of Design Thinking in this technology design context to create new knowledge both to the academic community and to practitioners working with technology design activities. By conducting a case study at SAP, one of the first movers using Design Thinking in technology design activities, stimulating results are discovered about the value creation and value delivery of the phenomenon in the context. The study results show that Design Thinking states to create value especially with two  elements in technology design: ideation capability and business and technology alignment. These stated value elements deliver value to companies with three different value delivery logics: functional improvement capability perspective, problem solving capability perspective and business innovation capability perspective. However, since this study has both its limitations and delimitations, these stimulating findings provide mostly key guidelines and points of discussion rather than exact facts. Especially it is an area of interest if these findings can be confirmed in further research.