This abridged case, the third in a series that begins with "Design Thinking in Action (A): South Western Railway" (UVA-S-0377), describes two waves of experimentation undertaken by UK railway operator South Western Railway (SWR) and its design-consultancy partner, David Kester & Associates (DK&A), during the deliver stage of their joint project to improve customer experience at SWR. They had followed a classic design thinking methodology, discovering customer experiences and needs, defining journey maps and personas, and developing concepts. In this final case, they tested those concepts in actual rail stations to determine whether they met goals for desirability, feasibility, and viability. For those interested in adding self or peer assessment to students' design thinking learning journey, Professor Jeanne Liedtka, working with coauthors Karen Hold, Jessica Eldridge, and Treehouse Design, has synthesized more than a decade of research at Darden to create the Innovation Impact Assessment. This tool will help students identify personal development opportunities and provide them with practical guidance (in the form of detailed individual feedback reports) to accelerate skill development. The instrument identifies a set of five core competencies based on 44 behaviors that successful design thinkers have in common. It is available for individual use and bulk purchase via Darden Business Publishing at this link: https://store.darden.virginia.edu/innovation_impact_assessment.

This case, a follow-up to "Design Thinking in Action (A): South Western Railway" (UVA-S-0377) and an abridged version of ""Design Thinking in Action (B): From Insights to Ideas at South Western Railway"" (UVA-S-0378), finds South Western Railway (SWR) and its design-consultancy partner, David Kester & Associates (DK&A), beginning work on a project to improve passenger experience. The team followed a classic design thinking methodology, the Double Diamond, focused on four steps-discover, define, develop, and deliver-and created an ambitious three-month schedule to meet a tight delivery deadline. The case describes in detail how team members gathered data from a variety of passenger categories, created persona types and journey maps, and identified new ideas to help SWR accomplish its goals. It concludes with questions about how these ideas should be tested. What design should experiments take? What outcomes were most important to measure and learn from? For those interested in adding self or peer assessment to students' design thinking learning journey, Professor Jeanne Liedtka, working with coauthors Karen Hold, Jessica Eldridge, and Treehouse Design, has synthesized more than a decade of research at Darden to create the Innovation Impact Assessment. This tool will help students identify personal development opportunities and provide them with practical guidance (in the form of detailed individual feedback reports) to accelerate skill development. The instrument identifies a set of five core competencies based on 44 behaviors that successful design thinkers have in common. It is available for individual use and bulk purchase via Darden Business Publishing at this link: https://store.darden.virginia.edu/innovation_impact_assessment.

This third case in the series that begins with "Design Thinking in Action (A): South Western Railway" (UVA-S-0377) describes two waves of experimentation undertaken by UK railway operator South Western Railway (SWR) and its design-consultancy partner, David Kester & Associates (DK&A), during the deliver stage of their joint project to improve customer experience at SWR. They had followed a classic design thinking methodology, discovering customer experiences and needs, defining journey maps and personas, and developing concepts. In this final case, they tested those concepts in actual rail stations to determine whether they met goals for desirability, feasibility, and viability. For those interested in adding self or peer assessment to students' design thinking learning journey, Professor Jeanne Liedtka, working with coauthors Karen Hold, Jessica Eldridge, and Treehouse Design, has synthesized more than a decade of research at Darden to create the Innovation Impact Assessment. This tool will help students identify personal development opportunities and provide them with practical guidance (in the form of detailed individual feedback reports) to accelerate skill development. The instrument identifies a set of five core competencies based on 44 behaviors that successful design thinkers have in common. It is available for individual use and bulk purchase via Darden Business Publishing at this link: https://store.darden.virginia.edu/innovation_impact_assessment.

This case, a follow-up to "Design Thinking in Action (A): South Western Railway" (UVA-S-0377), finds South Western Railway (SWR) and its design-consultancy partner, DK&A, beginning work on a project to improve passenger experience. The team followed a classic design thinking methodology, the Double Diamond, focused on four steps-discover, define, develop, and deliver-and created an ambitious three-month schedule to meet a tight delivery deadline. The case describes in detail how team members gathered data from a variety of passenger categories, created persona types and journey maps, and identified new ideas to help SWR accomplish its goals. It concludes with questions about how these ideas should be tested. What design should experiments take? What outcomes were most important to measure and learn from?

with a description of three concepts it inspired and an invitation to design a set of experiments to test the concepts' desirability, feasibility, and viability. The C case reviews the two phases of testing actually conducted. Taken together, the three cases cover a completed design thinking process in detail, with a particular goal of encouraging student reflection on the design of research plans, both exploratory and confirmatory. SWR operated some of the busiest train routes in the United Kingdom, with 235 million passenger journeys a year. It covered urban, suburban, regional, and long-distance routes between London's Waterloo Station and locations in southwestern England. SWR struggled with some long-term problems: challenging relations with a highly unionized work force, major network repairs needed, low staff morale, and overcrowded commuter services. All these were compounded by the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. Amid these challenges, senior leadership at SWR concluded that the pandemic presented a unique opportunity to change how the public and the UK Department for Transportation viewed SWR, and to improve the passenger experience. SWR reached out to David Kester & Associates (DK&A), a leading design-strategy consultancy, in search of a partnership that could help the rail company innovate. DK&A's mandate was clear: learn fast from customers, rapidly deliver confidence-building basics at stations, and work closely with SWR staff to reshape both the organization's culture and their passenger's experience. SWR wanted practical ideas to better meet customer needs-ones that could be trialed and scaled throughout the network. But how to go about gathering the data needed within a tight timeline amid the complexity of SWR's operations and opportunities? For those interested in adding self or peer assessment to students' design thinking learning journey, Professor Jeanne Liedtka, working with coauthors Karen Hold, Jessica Eldridge, and Treehouse

In innovation, experimentation is much talked about in the abstract, but poorly understood in practice. It bridges solution generation and implementation, yet often takes the form of smaller-scale pilots rather than learning-oriented experiments. Building an evidence base behind new ideas, and particularly being ready to discard what doesn't work, is critical for successful innovation. This technical note provides a hands-on, step-by-step guide and templates to lead students in any discipline through a structured process for the design of experiments, from what it takes to frame testable ideas all the way through to choosing the best experimental design and prototype.

Design thinking can be a critical facilitator of new technologies, but it is also a technology in its own right-a social technology that encourages more productive innovation conversations that are strategically valuable for dynamic capability building. By overcoming social and psychological barriers in innovation processes, design thinking accelerates progress on critical imperatives: allowing innovators at all levels to sense new opportunities; seize them by overcoming cognitive biases and aligning stakeholders; and transform and reconfigure resources. It accomplishes this through a set of well-recognized practices.

While we know a lot about practices that stimulate new ideas, innovation teams often struggle to apply them. Why? Because people's biases and entrenched behaviors get in the way. In this article a Darden professor explains how design thinking helps people overcome this problem and unleash their creativity. Though ostensibly geared to understanding and molding the experiences of customers, design thinking also profoundly reshapes the experiences of the innovators themselves. For example, immersive customer research helps them set aside their own views and recognize needs customers haven't expressed. Carefully planned dialogues help teams build on their diverse ideas, not just negotiate compromises when differences arise. And experiments with new solutions reduce all stakeholders' fear of change. At every phase-customer discovery, idea generation, and testing-a clear structure makes people more comfortable trying new things, and processes increase collaboration. Because it combines practical tools and human insight, design thinking is a social technology-one that the author predicts will have an impact as large as an earlier social technology: total quality management.

The authors argue that innovation is a social process tied to human emotions and reliant on inexact methodologies in which humans collaborate and solutions emerge over time. The authors argue that Design Thinking is a key part of 'innovation 2.0'-a new approach to innovation that involves a different set of participants in the process and uses a different approach. For example, in Innovation 2.0, the focus is on developing previously-unseen possibilities rather than starting out with existing options. They provide examples of organizations that are embracing innovation 2.0 and show what it looks like in practice.

This document is one of three available case-based simulations used as the basis for a multisession course on design thinking. The course emphasizes deep user understanding, iteration, and a focus on the possibilities as a way to enhance value creation for stakeholders. Please refer to the course teaching guide to view the additional essential pedagogical tools available to the course instructor-including several hours of video content and a set of posters that summarize ethnographic interview findings for each simulation scenario. Arena Industries is a global company seeking to improve the wellness of its employees. Students are asked to read a short introduction to Arena's business and operating philosophies, as well as details concerning the challenges present in the larger health care environment in the United States. Students play the role of a consultant who has been charged with recommending to Arena's leaders how best to address the opportunity to improve employee wellness.

This document is one of three available case-based simulations used as the basis for a multisession course on design thinking. The course emphasizes deep user understanding, iteration, and a focus on the possibilities as a way to enhance value creation for stakeholders. Please refer to the course teaching guide to view the additional essential pedagogical tools available to the course instructor-including several hours of video content and a set of posters that summarize ethnographic interview findings for each simulation scenario. The vice provost for academic affairs at Trenton State College (TSC) is tasked with designing a new retirement experience for faculty at the college. TSC, a public institution serving the state of Missouri, employs more than 1,500 full-time faculty and is facing a wave of upcoming retirements and an existing process that few feel is working well. Students play the role of a member of the provost's office who has been charged with reviewing the experience of retirees and recommending to TSC's leaders ideas to improve the retirement experience for faculty.

In 1995, Paul Shipman, CEO of Redhook Ale Brewery, and his management team prepared to enter uncharted territory by taking their craft-brewing operation public in the United States. Although there already were massive large-batch breweries that were profitable, publicly traded firms, Redhook was different: it embodied the ethos and grassroots beginnings of the microbrew movement. Still Shipman wondered about the potential of the craft-brewing industry segment.

The authors describe a case study of Design Thinking, showing how an organization in Denmark worked through the four stages of the Design Thinking process with help from a local design firm. They describe the four stages in detail - from 'uncovering current realities' to 'prototyping with customers'. Along the way, they show how the employees involved gained confidence in their creative and problem-solving abilities through the process, and that design has a key role to play in achieving creative organizational outcomes.

In this note, the author discusses how research shows that consistent growth companies engage in growth experiments or tests to gather better data to be used in determining which growth ideas are worth investing in. A Learning Launch is described as a process that can be used to do those growth experiments. Students will be shown that by doing Learning Launches, a business can evaluate many growth ideas quickly and cheaply, allowing it to gain better evidence to winnow down a multitude of ideas into a smaller group of ideas that appear to be more viable based on information learned.

Businesses would look quite different if managers thought like designers, the authors argue. For one, they would always begin with empathy - a deep understanding of their customer. Secondly, they would view themselves as creators of new-to-the-world products and services. And third, they would be in the habit of iterating their way to a solution - 'learning as they go' and incorporating the new learning into the next iteration. While many managers appreciate the power of design, a formal process has been elusive; until now. The authors describe a four-step process for bringing design thinking to life that begins with asking, 'What if?' and ends with asking 'What Works?' - the launch and learn stage. In the end, they show that an unavoidable but healthy tension will always exist between creating the new and preserving the best of the present, and as a manager, your key challenge is to learn how to manage that tension.

Strategy is complex, requiring clarity about organizational objectives as well as the variety of external forces-competitive, economic, and technological-that come into play. Ultimately, strategy is an integrative exercise. This technical note provides a concise basis for a comprehensive discussion of strategic concerns.

Leaders often focus on gaining employees' intellectual acceptance of a new strategy and view this as an early milestone in successful implementation. The problem is, this approach isn't working very well: study after study demonstrates that the 'knowing-doing gap' is alive and well, and that many carefully-constructed strategies continue to be ignored or dismissed by the employees whose behavior must change in order to make them work. The author argues that feeling strategy must accompany knowing it. She explains what it means to 'feel' strategy -- to experience it in an emotional as well as a cognitive way, and describes the four key components of fostering strategy as experienced in your organization.

This technical note is part of a course module that focuses on teaching design-thinking skills and 10 tools to identify and implement innovation and growth opportunities. It can be taught to MBA, undergraduate, or executive groups. The note and its accompanying teaching note includes an explanation of why design thinking is a useful addition to a business curriculum, an outline for a 15-session course, a description of the 10 design tools taught, and a set of student exercises to practice them. It also summarizes a series of 10 video interviews with leading designers and teachers that are available for free on the designing at Darden website.

This case series explores the leadership story of director Mark O'Neill as he oversees a major innovation initiative at Kelvingrove, Scotland's most visited museum. The A case describes his background, philosophy, and the actions he takes over a period of more than a decade to win the support of both staff and funders for the innovation. The B case examines the reaction of the public and art critics. O'Neill arrives at Kelvingrove to find an institution in turmoil after a series of dramatic changes that have alienated visitors and funders alike. Utilizing an innovative style of management that he describes as "maze behavior," he succeeds in moving the traditionally discipline-bound, curator-dominated museum into a cross-disciplinary, visitor-oriented experience. He does this by engaging the curators in creating exhibits based on stories rather than professional classification schemes such as paintings, geology, etc., using an approach that includes a deep understanding of his audience and the imaginative use of forms. He also gains the community's political and funding support to accomplish his goals.

This case series explores the leadership story of director Mark O'Neill as he oversees a major innovation initiative at Kelvingrove, Scotland's most visited museum. The A case describes his background, philosophy, and the actions he takes over a period of more than a decade to win the support of both staff and funders for the innovation. The B case examines the reaction of the public and art critics. O'Neill arrives at Kelvingrove to find an institution in turmoil after a series of dramatic changes that have alienated visitors and funders alike. Utilizing an innovative style of management that he describes as "maze behavior," he succeeds in moving the traditionally discipline-bound, curator-dominated museum into a cross-disciplinary, visitor-oriented experience. He does this by engaging the curators in creating exhibits based on stories rather than professional classification schemes such as paintings, geology, etc., using an approach that includes a deep understanding of his audience and the imaginative use of forms. He also gains the community's political and funding support to accomplish his goals.