Barriers to the adoption of design thinking by leaders in South Africa

Abstract

Innovation has been identified as an important driver for organisation to remain competitive. Design thinking has bee touted as a practice for organisations to improve their innovation outcomes. With the proliferation of design thinking training, it is still surprising that leaders still choose not to use the practice as part of their innovation tools. This research investigates why leaders choose not to adopt design thinking as an innovation approach. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with thirteen managers in different companies belonging to different industries in South Africa. Their opinions were analysed through the lens of the diffusion of innovation theory using the innovationdecision process. The study found that lack of influence, poor learning outcomes, existing innovation practices, organisational culture, existing work practices and the lack of change management contribute to the lack of adoption of design thinking. This study contributes to the literature on the implementation of design thinking by investigating the adoption decision using an individual as a decision-making unit. The study proposes adding change management design thinking training and augmenting the innovation-decision process with a lot more emphasis on change management.