Roger Martin's book The Design of Business, nicely explains the significance of combining analytical and design thinking in order to acquire a competitive advantage. Roger Martins discusses the tale of sustainable firms and how some business owners have made market breakthroughs over time, beginning with the post-World War II period. Roger Martin claims that businesses can achieve a dynamic interplay of intuitive creativity and analytic mastery through design thinking. According to Martin, this technique is required to retain a long-term competitive advantage. In all, the book's core question is: "How do you build a successful business?" The author proposes the concept of a "knowledge funnel."
The progression from mystery to heuristic to algorithm is represented by the knowledge funnel. Successful organizations, according to the author, are those that can extract business algorithms from complex problems. It may appear simple, but it is a difficult path that begins with a query and ends with a strategy.
The knowledge funnel process is:
- A mystery is investigated by considering a notion or a problem
- Heuristic, which entails figuring out the enigma and reducing it to a reasonable size
- Use the heuristic to run, control, and study until the formula is discovered
It's about approaching a problem from the client's point of view, posing a question, and experimenting with new and creative ideas until you find the correct set of rules or methods.
Martin also contrasts “analytical thinking” and “design thinking,” two schools of thought. The model for value creation, as he discusses in his book, necessitates a balance and reconciliation of these two methods.
- Analytical thinking is centered on thorough and quantitative analysis. As he explains, the goal of this technique is mastery through a thorough analytical process
- Design thinking, also known as intuitive thinking, is an alternative to traditional thinking that combines creativity and originality. It occurs when a person understands something without having to reason about it
Despite his emphasis on the relevance of the information funnel in design thinking, not every riddle can be turned into an algorithm. This is especially true for procedures that need a high level of tacit knowledge that is difficult to define. Within organizations, harmonizing analytical and intuitive thinking is another difficulty. Companies frequently pick one of two options: exploration or exploitation, and ignore the other. When competitors adopt your algorithm, the third challenge arises. To stay competitive, you must restart the process; in other words, the knowledge funnel is cyclical rather than linear. Continuous practice and balance are required for the development of design thinking. Companies must be able to enter the knowledge funnel, pay the price for comprehending an unfamiliar scenario, devise question(s), investigate valid solution(s), and efficiently utilize those solutions.