Design Thinking summative assignment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Design Thinking summative assignment - Essay Example The combination allows individuals who may not be trained as designers to apply ingenious tools to deal with a wide range of challenges. It allows the management to take advantage of individual competences that go unnoticed in the traditional problem solving strategies. This paper presents an analysis the concept of design-thinking. It also describes the application of design thinking criteria in Coca-Cola Company. It highlights the benefits identified by embedding design-thinking opportunities through design. The concept of Design-Thinking in Coca-Cola Company The Coca-Cola Company has maintained a significant market share globally for many years, which can be attributed to the company’s competitive strategy of design thinking. Diet Coke is a brand that was developed through design thinking with the intention of offering a new drink targeted at consumers who are gradually moving away from high calorie drinks and also to lessen the company’s carbon foot print emanating from the carbon based preservative ejected in to the atmosphere globally when every carbonated drink is opened (Boutzikas, 2000). The product was also focused on increasing the variety of Coca-Cola products as well as getting precise and instantaneous response with regards to customer preferences. It came in to the US market in 1982 as the first soft drink to use the Coca-Cola trademark since 1886 (Vrontis & Sharp, 2003). In the design thinking for the development of Diet Coke, everyone was considered as part of the whole process. According to (Brian, 2010), success is not only accomplished through combining the managers and the subordinates together, also requires people who are creative and good designers who are motivated by business matters. The Diet Coke project focused on promoting a common attitude with regards to inventiveness in the factory and to bring in external desires such as taste, fashion, music, photography and other things that could help in promoting creativity in the workplace. Design thinking requires a conducive environment for people to feel free to think and utilize their full potential, which results in an amalgamation of different characteristics that the new product will serve (Badke-Schaub et al. 2010). Free collaboration between the various departments in the company enhanced the development and marketing of Diet Coke in 1982 emerging as the bestselling low calorie beverage in the US within a very short period. According to Vrontis & Sharp (2003), free collaboration between the skill sets in the development of Diet Coke was enhanced by allowing each player in the project team to act out of free will to accomplish a common objective. The skill sets involved included strategy and design. Despite being in a different career path, Diet Coke project team participated equally in the project. Each of the components meant a lot in the success of product competitiveness (Boutzikas, 2000). Research and development have significantly contribu ted to innovativeness that has helped Coca-Cola to maintain global competitiveness. Diet Coke was developed in a design thinking approach that linked the global research and development centers to the company’s External Technology Assessment and Acquisition hubs that play an important role of enhancing the link between the company, its associates, industrialists, technological innovators and academics (Isdell & Beasley,