(PLEASE SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH TO the next if you are a first-time visitor to this blog. This first paragraph is going to be all about my confessions and apologies to the die-hard readers, especially those who're kind enough to subscribe to it. So, yes, I have been rather lame. I thought I could get back to writing again after my last post Day 75, after getting stuck at an airport's terminal for 12 hours. Since then, I have been busy again and not been able to get back to writing.
This post is something that I have been wanting to write for the past few months. That said, the good news is that I now feel inspired again. Guess what? Now I have a book to which I am looking forward; this blog is going to become alive again!).
Over the past two years, I have been giving lectures, workshops, seminars and talks on a goal- inspired multidisciplinary creative process known to many as "design thinking." In this post, I want to summarize the three key points of what I think design thinking entails, produces, and, most importantly, is. This blog is the beginning of, hopefully, a long term and consistent commitment on my part to keep up with this blog. Man, I have to, at least, get to the 100th day as the name of the blog entails!
I will. That's not even a question, now that I have a much firmer ground of what I want to write about over the next couple of months. It's one thing: design thinking. It's the topic that I have been investing most of my waking hours thinking, musing, and writing about. I have been approached by, and for which I have been grateful to, a few top publishers in China who reveal to me that there "isn't any good books on the topic of design thinking" in the Chinese market.
I have always believed that China is the most important nation on earth in the present -- and will continue to be so in years to come -- for the reason that whatever it does will have a profound impact and effect on everyone on this planet.
Hence, I feel as though my work (and eventually, at one point this year, a book) will have a small contribution to how China may want to see its development and growth vis-a-vis its responsibility -- ecologically, economically, socioculturally -- as the most important nation on the planet. Over the past two years, also, I have taught more than 60 courses to hundreds of curious learners -- from primary school students to entrepreneurs running companies of millions of dollars (and RMBs) industrial assets.
I have learned so much along this continuing journey. In this first installment of this design thinking threads, I want to talk about something closest to my heart about design thinking: It's three most important principles. There are many versions of and various popular meanings that some have given to the term (in some 40 books and hundreds of blog posts available in the market at the present).
The most important message I have been trying to convey, however, are the following: Design thinking requires a much much "deeper" level of participation (i.e., "Don't just ask what people think they want" principle -- most of us simply can not want what we do not know of; don't you agree?
); Design thinking requires us to imagine the world in which any status quo does not existed (i.e., "How would you design something if we that something has not existed before" principle); and, Design thinking does not always have to require expensive invention (i.e., "Can't use a pen in space? Don't spend money invent a pen to write in space, just use a pencil" principle). These are the three most basic principles of design thinking. I will continue with the details of these three points in my next post.
To be continued....
Gossiping, or, by Definition, a Crime Against Humanity