Abstract
There has been a significant shift from product-centric to customer-centric practices to achieve competitive advantage by integrating customer needs, preferences, and expectations. Many practitioners and academicians have championed the adoption of design thinking as an approach that can be used to help companies become customer-and product-centric simultaneously. While there has been an increase in design thinking literature, there is limited knowledge on how businesses can effectively integrate design thinking to achieve optimal results. To bridge this knowledge gap, a systematic review of the bibliometric literature was conducted to gather and analyze data on the challenges and opportunities of implementing design thinking in product design. The research aims to provide insights that will guide practitioners in integrating design thinking to create business approaches that balance critical aspects of customer-centric and product-centric philosophies.
TopMethodological Approach
A systematic bibliometric literature review (LRSB) was conducted to unpack the evolutionary nuances of design thinking and the concept's associated opportunities and barriers. LRSB is a popular and rigorous method used to explore and analyze large volumes of scientific data (Ellegaard & Wallin, 2015, Rosário, 2021, Raimundo & Rosário, 2021, Rosário et al., 2021, Rosário & Dias, 2022). This methodological approach was chosen based on Donthu et al. (2021) argument that bibliometric analyses help uncover “emerging trends in article and journal performance, collaboration patterns, and research constituents, and to explore the intellectual structure of a specific domain in the extant literature” (p.285). Linnenluecke et al. (2020) further explain that following the LRSB research process can help clarify the topic of study, in this case, the concept of design thinking and its applications in business by synthesizing data from multiple scientific sources.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Prototyping/Prototypes: Is a work product of the testing and/or planning phase of a project.
Product Design: Is to create a new product to be sold by a company to its customers.
Fuzzy Front End (FFE): The period between when an opportunity for a new product is first considered, and when the product idea is judged ready to enter “formal” development.
Business model: Describes how an organization creates, delivers and captures value, in economic, social, cultural or other contexts.
Design: Is the idealization, creation, development, configuration, conception, elaboration, and specification of products.
Design Thinking: It is a method to stimulate ideation and insight when approaching problems, related to future information acquisition, knowledge analysis and proposed solutions.
Return on Investment (ROI): Is a performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or compare the efficiency of several investments.