Design thinking is the structured, linear process IDEO and the Stanford d-school created to help business people create better solutions than sitting in a bar and writing on the back of a napkin.
If you have teams following this process consider these 3 metrics to ensure your organization is measuring the change in behavior:
- Frequency of new customer insights being added to the team understanding
- The balance of team composition during solution exploration and ideation: .34 domain, .33 operations, and .33 outside blood
- Time to testing prototypes with potential users
So if you know your customer well, have the proper mix of people, and test your ideas as soon as possible you will create better solutions and find out if they work for your customers sooner rather than later.