Boosting Design Thinking adoption in organisations through a game‐based toolkit: A gamified approach in building facilitators to overcome Design Thinking adoption barriers

Abstract

Design Thinking is increasingly used within organisations to achieve innovative results that give companies a competitive advantage. However, this is not an easily achievable result: companies face multiple obstacles that slow adoption and often force companies not to pursue adoption. The scientific community has not identified clear contributions that can help overcome the barriers discussed in the literature for years, giving the possibility to companies to boost Design Thinking adoption. By studying 10 private organisations that have adopted Design Thinking effectively, overcoming the main adoption obstacles, this study tries to identify which facilitators can be adopted to enable an effective adoption. This puts companies in a position to benefit from Design Thinking and achieve innovative performance. In any case, these represent complex notions to be even understood. As an additional result, the study recognises how game‐based formats enhance and facilitate the adoption mentioned above of Design Thinking within private organisations. The literature has already identified that game‐based formats facilitate the understanding and digestion of new concepts and procedures. This study expands the range of applications of gamified approaches in unconventional contexts and scope, verifying the benefits also in relation to Design Thinking. A new game‐based format has been designed for this research, which was also tested. The study demonstrates how the integration in the organisational culture of approaches such as Design Thinking through a gamified format represents one of the critical ways companies can embrace to face the internal tension of transformation, speeding up the adoption process to give companies the possibility to adopt innovation processes faster.