d.school delivers your Design Thinking Toolkit

Hikmaty Discovery is all about mastering the core 21C skills of innovation and creativity. The world of 21C work is hungry for innovation and creative people. Employers constantly ask for more recruits with creativity skills and whilst it is one of the most overused words in LinkedIn profiles – there is a mismatch because whilst people use the word to describe themselves – they really don’t truly know how to apply it effectively in their lives.  It is no good saying ‘I am just not creative’ either –the ability to look at things in different ways, empathise, solve problems, generate and adapt ideas are foundation skills for 21C success. Hal Gregerson in Innovators DNA suggests only 25% of your capability is down to genetics – 75% is about mastering some key behaviours, learning to use your mind and the right skillset. You can learn this stuff.

If you want to learn about creativity there are many great books available (as books or to listen to on Audible). We would recommend start with Twyla Tharp, Michael Gelb, Elizabeth Gilbert and Tina Selig (from d. School). You will also find talks by them on You Tube and TED.

Stanford University (USA) is a great College to get an education and their d. school aims to be ‘the best design school. Period.’ Stanford established d. School as the hub for innovators – it is not one of their seven Colleges and it does not grant degrees – instead, it is a resource for all the students to come and learn these key 21C skills together. Students and faculty in engineering, medicine, business, law, the humanities, sciences, and education collaborate on transformative learning experiences, knowing that inevitably the innovations will follow. d. School has evolved into a mash up of industry, academia and the wider world beyond campus through business collaborations and open course to use design thinking principles. They developed a process for reliably producing creative solutions to nearly any challenge that they call design thinking. A term used widely in business – these guys have mastered it.

If you are going to learn more about innovation processes and creativity skills – it requires more than reading – the learning comes from doing. Design Thinking is a great place to begin a creativity journey. It has a clearly defined process – with a map, a huge set of tools and a mindset to improve your creativity skills. The best place to learn about it – is to go to where it was developed and mastered – d. School.

Not long ago if you wanted a Stanford education you had to go be a student on Campus but now we all should be really grateful that some of these learning resources are available for you to use free online – so everyone can get a little bit of a Stanford education – wherever they are in the world. The simple structured approach and toolkit that supports the process provide a useful introduction to innovation and creativity techniques. Master this toolkit and you are well on the way to getting a real competitive advantage to keep your business and career on track. These are tools you should know and understand how to apply as you seek to solve everyday challenges in your work and life generally. It is a way of being in the world which directly relates back to the Innovators DNA and their discovery skills.