Imagine running a marathon in a new city, without any step-by-step directions. You might have an idea, but you haven’t really tested your trajectory. Speed is of the essence, but so is making intelligent decisions, smart bets most times, about where to go, what route to take, when to pause, reorient, ask for directions, ask for help, and take off again. Sometimes the visibility is clear for miles and at other times, it’s as foggy as the Golden Gate Bridge on a cool morning where you can only see one step ahead of you. While you’re doing all of this, you’re also trying to convince other runners to join you in this race to somewhere. Greatness? Possibly. That’s our hope, and we’re betting on it. 

Welcome to the startup studio environment. High-intensity and so very exhilarating (for the right people).

As you’re running, you hear the crowds. The burning questions surfacing with every new face, with every corner turned: is this the right process, are we engaging the right people at the right time, are we focused on the right problems, are we doing enough in the right spaces at the right time? So many questions, all while running a semi-blind marathon.

These questions, though essential periodically, begin to take on a different tone the longer you trek. What begins as inquisitive in nature starts to feel restrictive and doubtful in their intent. Asking the right questions is highly encouraged. However, not everyone comes to the table with an open spirit, with wonder and curiosity. If we’re not vigilant, some of these questions may threaten our nimble and agile nature as they demand concrete answers coupled with a linear, predictive process for inspired innovation. I feel like it’s on the verge of becoming stifling and killing our chances of creating ground-breaking companies mainly because they come from a place where there is discomfort with ambiguity and the unknown.

Let the runner run! If you can’t hang, get out of the way.

It is with a sense of urgency that I write these words. I fear that the inquisitive, curious, open, and fluid essence of the studio, qualities I value at the core and key reasons why I believe we’ll be successful, is under indirect attack. I have a sense of responsibility that overwhelms me, and it is moving me to act as both protector and guardian of these qualities that are so hard to find in most orgs, the ones that help us run marathons, keeping us fluidly adaptive to all the signals around us. It is this burning sensation that forces me to pause, create some order to the why’s of what we do, and reaffirm that this approach works. 

On a more personal note – it’s can be exhausting to have to convince people why our process works, or how it even works, the elementals. Some blinded by ego and gender bias have gone over my head to defy and change the process. Aside from that foolishness, I do empathize with the others that have the right intent, the intent to learn, albeit nervously. They come from a different environment with different processes, none from a design thinking background, so this unfamiliar environment is challenging for many of them. They come with this need for a predictable process and they’re not going to find it here. (And if they do find it, then yikes. No good.) But at some point, we just gotta jump in and do it. We must embrace that an open-ended, open-minded, and iterative process fed by design thinking and user-centricity yields truly innovative results vs. the mediocre, incremental outputs of linear, milestone-based processes. So, either get in the race or step back, because anything else is just wasting our time and time is our most valuable non-renewable resource.

With that, get ready for a comprehensive deep dive into design thinking and its application in the venture building world. My goal is to help you truly understand design thinking and its principles, to level set and ensure we are speaking the same language with the terminology, to break out and synthesize the many parts of design thinking, and then find real world applications with best practices.

No matter who you are and no matter the industry, through this creative problem solving approach, you will be able to create the opportunities of tomorrow.