Robust Design Review Conversations

Design reviews and executive conversations at the point of strategic decision-making share an important outcome: they both result in the (nearly) irrevocable allocation of resources to pursue a design concept or strategic option. Our study aims to contribute to the strategic decision-making scholarship by investigating the robustness of these conversations. We define a robust design review conversation as one in which the participants discuss evidence in favor of and against the option and at the same time propose new hypotheses to explain or resolve the evidence in favor of and against the option, hypotheses that can eventually be tested. We describe this second process as generative sensing. Whereas the first process is likely to rely on deductive reasoning from established rules to a definitive conclusion, the second is likely to rely on abductive reasoning, a form of reasoning that generates new hypotheses that are candidate parsimonious explanations for the evidence. We analyze and compare the design review conversations from a junior-level undergraduate course in industrial design and an entrepreneurship course. We find more instances of generative sensing in the industrial design review sessions than in the entrepreneurship project presentations. We believe that generative sensing serves three instrumental purposes: to resolve problems; to provide signals on option quality; and, to test the commitment to the present design concept

Demystifying the genius of entrepreneurship: How design cognition can help create the next generation of entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurship education is a key beneficiary of design thinking’s recent momentum. Both designers and entrepreneurs create opportunities for innovation in products, services, processes, and business models. More specifically, both design thinking and entrepreneurship education encourage individuals to look at the world with fresh eyes, create hypotheses to explain their surroundings and desired futures, and adopt cognitive acts to reduce the psychological uncertainty associated with ambiguous situations. In this article, we illustrate how we train students to apply four well-established cognitive acts from the design-cognition research paradigm—framing, analogical reasoning, abductive reasoning, and mental simulation—to opportunity creation. Our pedagogical approach is based on scholarship in design cognition that emphasizes creating preferred situations from existing ones, rather than applying a defined set of tools from management scholarship. In doing so, we provide avenues for further development of entrepreneurship education, particularly the integration of design cognition

Five things you should know about cost overrun

This paper gives an overview of good and bad practice for understanding and curbing cost overrun in large capital investment projects, with a critique of Love and Ahiaga-Dagbui (2018) as point of departure. Good practice entails: (a) Consistent definition and measurement of overrun; in contrast to mixing inconsistent baselines, price levels, etc. (b) Data collection that includes all valid and reliable data; as opposed to including idiosyncratically sampled data, data with removed outliers, non-valid data from consultancies, etc. (c) Recognition that cost overrun is systemically fat-tailed; in contrast to understanding overrun in terms of error and randomness. (d) Acknowledgment that the root cause of cost overrun is behavioral bias; in contrast to explanations in terms of scope changes, complexity, etc. (e) De-biasing cost estimates with reference class forecasting or similar methods based in behavioral science; as opposed to conventional methods of estimation, with their century-long track record of inaccuracy and systemic bias. Bad practice is characterized by violating at least one of these five points. Love and Ahiaga-Dagbui violate all five. In so doing, they produce an exceptionally useful and comprehensive catalog of the many pitfalls that exist, and must be avoided, for properly understanding and curbing cost overrun

Does organizational politics kill company growth?

Purpose Whether an organization’s political behaviour is positively related to its performance has been a long-standing question. Most studies elaborating on this issue, although rich in detail, primarily have been limited to case studies, apart from a niche set of studies in international business. This study aims to explore this question through a survey study of managers and executives from around the world, across a range of industries. Design/methodology/approach The study explores the link between politics, the ability of a firm to speedily reach the market and its growth rate through a study of 382 executives from across the world. It also investigates alternative explanations of slow speed to market due to power centralization, decision-making layers and conflict. Findings The results show that politics – the observable but often covert actions through which executives influence internal decisions – has a direct negative effect on a firm’s ability to reach the market first and on its growth rate. That is, not only is politics time-consuming but it may also have a detrimental impact on the selection of the best growth opportunities. Originality/value Politics does have a negative impact on growth; it slows down a firm’s growth and its ability to reach the market. This study eliminates possible alternative explanations of a slow pace to market: slower companies are not so because they have too many decision-making layers but because they use consultative processes in resource-allocation decisions, or because of conflict

Design Thinking

Design thinking encompasses the cognitions, processes and tools that aim to describe how designers, and any individual with a design attitude, think and work in the creation of desired futures. The definition and what comprises design thinking is in constant flux and expansion and no single definition represents the wealth of discussion that has taken place over the years since the term became part of the collective consciousness of design researchers (Rowe 1987)

Does organizational politics kill company growth?

Purpose Whether an organization’s political behaviour is positively related to its performance has been a long-standing question. Most studies elaborating on this issue, although rich in detail, primarily have been limited to case studies, apart from a niche set of studies in international business. This study aims to explore this question through a survey study of managers and executives from around the world, across a range of industries. Design/methodology/approach The study explores the link between politics, the ability of a firm to speedily reach the market and its growth rate through a study of 382 executives from across the world. It also investigates alternative explanations of slow speed to market due to power centralization, decision-making layers and conflict. Findings The results show that politics – the observable but often covert actions through which executives influence internal decisions – has a direct negative effect on a firm’s ability to reach the market first and on its growth rate. That is, not only is politics time-consuming but it may also have a detrimental impact on the selection of the best growth opportunities. Originality/value Politics does have a negative impact on growth; it slows down a firm’s growth and its ability to reach the market. This study eliminates possible alternative explanations of a slow pace to market: slower companies are not so because they have too many decision-making layers but because they use consultative processes in resource-allocation decisions, or because of conflict

Artificial Intelligence as a Growth Engine for Health Care Startups: Emerging Business Models

The future of health care may change dramatically as entrepreneurs offer solutions that change how we prevent, diagnose, and cure health conditions, using artificial intelligence (AI). This article provides a timely and critical analysis of AI-driven health care startups and identifies emerging business model archetypes that entrepreneurs from around the world are using to bring AI solutions to the marketplace. It identifies areas of value creation for the application of AI in health care and proposes an approach to designing business models for AI health care startups

Abductive Reasoning in New Venture Ideas

Understanding how new venture ideas emerge and how this process can be augmented by the wealth of data and computing power of artificial intelligence (AI) is critical. Here, we explicate how abduction operates in relation to the generation of new venture ideas and how this might be augmented in a world of AI. Compared to deduction and induction, abduction is a more useful form of reasoning and innovative abduction generates more innovative new venture ideas than explanatory abduction. We further posit that AI will become an enabler for more rapid generation of high quality and more numerous new venture ideas

Generative sensing in design evaluation

The analysis of design review conversations from a junior-level undergraduate industrial design course and an entrepreneurship course uncovered a new pattern of design thinking. Design thinking during concept evaluation contains a recursive hypothesis-driven pattern that we name generative sensing. Generative sensing commences with deductive reasoning from established rules to a definitive conclusion in favour of or against a concept. These conclusions become the basis for new hypotheses that suggest actions to address problems or invite rebuttals to defend the original logic of the concept. Generative sensing is a pattern of design thinking that creates ways through the design problem by testing propositions in a recursive manner