Leading design thinking consulting firms make no bones about it: As innovation becomes essential for business viability across sectors, elite consultancies are emerging to guide organizations lacking this capacity in-house. Beyond one-off workshops, top design thinking consulting firms provide holistic solutions evolving creative cultures long-term through research, training and application support.
The process generally starts by quantifying an organization’s innovation maturity using assessments determining employee capabilities in human-centered design domains like rapid prototyping, user empathy, visual communication and cross-functional collaboration. Consultants then identify prime opportunities and friction points for introducing design thinking companywide.
Equipped with baseline analytics, the best design thinking consulting firms develop a tailored transformation strategy targeting capability-building workshops first for pivotal senior leaders and critical project teams. Immersive sessions demonstrate leveraging design thinking for communications, product development, customer research, strategy and more. Participants leave these energetic, hands-on experiences excited to apply learnings immediately.
To sustain adoption momentum, consultancies supply easily-digestible toolkits codifying key frameworks, reminders and tips for ongoing reinforcement even after active training concludes. Customized innovation metrics provide benchmarking as teams implement learnings on experimental projects. Bespoke consultants and design thinking consulting firms offer supplemental coaching and feedback to solidify growth.
Top consultancies also partner long-term with clients to facilitate innovation labs, provide educator training for internal design coaching roles and host periodic refresher courses. Some design thinking consulting firms even maintain memberships allowing organizational leaders to access resources from across their cohort network.
Top pros act as catalysts for enterprise transformation rather than suppliers of one-time experiences. They strengthen organizational muscles around human-centered creative problem solving through research, skill-building, leadership alignment and strategy. The fruits over time are cultures instinctively avoiding insular thinking by cross-pollinating ideas across functions. Teams feel continuously empowered to question status quos and rapid prototype inventive solutions centered first on human needs versus processes. By unlocking latent creative potential within every employee to tackle challenges small and large, design thinking consulting firms drive impact at scale. Advisory solutions leave lasting capabilities making organizations anti-fragile even as markets experiences exponential change.