Small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are generally clear on the need for innovation; however they are very often less clear on how innovation can be brought about. One possible reason for this may be because of a lack of an innovation culture within their business. Global giants such as Google and Apple are companies with highly evolved innovation cultures that the average SME may have difficulty in relating to. Developing appropriate tools for SMEs to allow them to develop their own innovation cultures is a core activity for the Centre for Design & Innovation (c4di). This paper describes how SMEs have been assisted through the application of design thinking to develop their own innovation cultures through a programme of workshops and one to one support. This paper strives to look beyond the rhetoric behind design thinking to critically evaluate the techniques and approaches that have proved to be of particular value when working with companies
