In this article Natasha Iskander argues that Design Thinking enables corporations to justify their risk averse decisions under the guise of a thin veil of understanding their customers needs. We call it design think washing! While this is an interesting critique, it misses the fact that it is not the methodology that is creating this problem as much as it is the way that it is being used.

Occasionally, a new way of organizing work leads to extraordinary improvements. Total quality management did that in manufacturing in the 1980s by combining a set of tools—kanban cards, quality circles, and so on—with the insight that people on the shop floor could do much higher level work than they usually were asked to.

Even more than other change-management processes, design thinking requires active and effective leadership to keep efforts on a path to success [because it employs ideas and thinking not normal in most businesses]. Much has been written, in HBR and elsewhere, about how organizations can use design thinking for innovation.

Even though brainstorming groups don’t generate more or better ideas (research proves this), brainstorming is arguably more democratic than the alternatives, so it can enhance buy-in and subsequent implementation of the ideas generated, regardless of the quality of those ideas.

Why do you brainstorm and what do you expect its role is in your project?

Brainstorming for questions rather than answers makes it easier to push past cognitive biases and venture into uncharted territory. We’ve seen this dynamic in academic studies—in social psychologist Adam Galinsky’s research on the power of reframing during times of transition, for instance.

The original version of Quicken offered only one-third the features that many competing products had, but with an important difference: It was well designed. Instead of looking like a spreadsheet, it displayed the familiar images of a check register and an individual check.

The Harvard Business Review publishes many articles (7,557) on Design Thinking. It is after all gradually being recognized as a successful way to help companies to become more innovative and to make innovation more effective by focusing on users needs.

Here are some good articles?

As CEO, Nooyi visits a market every week to see what PepsiCo looks like on the shelves. She always ask herself—not as a CEO but as a mom—“What products really speak to me?” The shelves just seem more and more cluttered, so she thought they had to rethink their innovation process and design experiences for PepsiCo's consumers—from conception to what’s on the shelf.

There is a right way to lead Design Thinking? Yes, if you want to leverage empathy, encourage a diversity of ideas and navigate the ambiguity of big hairy complex problems. Employees who are unfamiliar with design thinking (usually the majority) need the guidance and support of leaders to navigate the unfamiliar landscape and productively channel their reactions to the approach.