The design thinking mindset: An assessment of what we know and what we see in practice

In this paper, we provide a comprehensive assessment of the design thinking mindset. First, we review the design and management literature to identify and define key cognitive and behavioural components of a design thinking mindset, before we report our initial findings from 15 in-depth interviews with innovation managers in Australia and Germany who reflect on their practices while implementing design thinking within their organizations. Our explorative study confirms a set of commonly understood and applied mindsets, but also reveals the impact of organisational constraints on translating cognition into behaviour. We suggest to further map the different mindsets used in design thinking projects and link them to extant leadership theory, which – as we argue – provides a suitable point of departure for further study of the design thinking mindset and its role for innovation.