Mathieu, what was the main driver for you to start a new adventure around Design Thinking?
M.S. Without a doubt, it was purpose. We live in an age where knowledge and people have never been so accessible. This makes it more possible to reach our inner goals, to “self actualize”. This is currently what I'm doing. Many great speakers and influencers have expressed this much better than me, like Dan Pink or Simon Sinek, or closer to home, Oussma Amar from “The Family”. They have all influenced my thoughts. I guess aging helped a bit also, I wanted to do it before my 40's, time passes so fast. Design Thinking was my path because I used to be a project manager, then I worked with startups and ran innovation programs for a big corporation, and, as Design Thinking is a great methodology to explore and solve complex problems, plus my emotional intelligence training, I guess that made the “perfect storm” at this point in my life.
Recently you led some workshops around “Design your career”. Many participants became deeply involved in your workshops. What do you think is the reason for this? What exactly were they learning?
M.S. I crafted "Design your career" workshops as a gift for my former colleagues. I wanted to give a hand to all these incredible people. I had been stuck in a personal and professional situation that was not sustainable and it took me years to escape from it. I wondered if my existential issues and the way I resolved them could benefit others. I'm not saying that my example would fit any other personal situation, but the tools, like design thinking, can help you to ask yourself the right questions to move on.
The second main driver was the group and collective intelligence. This is a new phenomenon, bringing micro groups of pairs together, address the same issues and help them - in a quick way - to help each other and take the first step to come out of their comfort zone. I think this is because of these deep bonds that we are able to craft something very quickly and having to be in action instantly that really makes the groups to continue to stick together, to help each other. I am not offering a money-back guarantee that you'll find your 5 -year strategy in 6 hours. I am saying, you're not alone anymore to try to figure it out. And this is working. Two months have passed since the first Design your Career workshop and people are continuing to interact, to share networking contacts, bring advice, have lunch together, celebrate successes and failures. This is happening, and I'm extremely grateful, because these people fed me in return too, and inspired me to move on. When you listen to each of them, they have INCREDIBLE stories, and SO MANY skills to bring to the market. That's exciting.
How do you think the Design Thinking is applicable to a large, multinational enterprise?
M.S. The definition of Design Thinking for me these days is: a mix between designers empathy techniques, and collective intelligence tooling, to bring solutions in a fun and effective way. Globally, Design Thinking is one of these trends that brings something bigger, and I'm not saying this in a self-interested way Design Thinking is the HOW, the tool. The WHY, is about how people collaborate, interact, and create value together. This is a real big deal in terms of cultural shift that big companies should look at. If you're a multinational company, for sure you should give it a try. Actually, I'm doing research on remote collaboration because I think that it is the trickiest and most promising topic to consider. Scalability too is quite a challenge, measuring value in an objective way too. But the same issues came with Agile methodologies. So, I think it's very applicable. It has already been proven that human-centered companies were more profitable and efficient than the others.
How can Design Thinking help start-ups on their innovation road?
M.S. Startups and Design Thinking is always a difficult question. If you're in b2c it's better, because it's really user-centered, faster to validate your assumptions from the market. If you're at the beginning of the road, looking for a problem-solution fit, it's better, you have not already delivered a product or started to code something that will be hard to change or kill. If you're scaling up it can work too, because you are growing super-fast. At some point, you'll have to keep the bonds between the members of your team, and methodology as processes can help. You don't have ubiquity as a CEO to lead your team. But it's a question of mindset about the way you collaborate, and if you're already in the execution phase, using lean startup, it may not be the right time to reboot your culture or beliefs. It will just delay you from getting answers from the market. BUT, at the same time, I can't accept the Manichean vision of you having the right mindset so you're successful vs you have not the right mindset so your startup should die. What if you're in the middle? Don't you deserve a little help?
What are your plans for immediate future?
M.S. Easy! Do more DESIGN THINKING!!! I'm launching ”Design your Career” as a product in the coming weeks. Leading a free initiation meetup in my neighborhood https://www.meetup.com/fr-FR/Design-Thinking-Make-it-KLAP-a-SACLAY/events/262046640/ to spread the goodwill.
Also, I'll spend my summer vacation in Bali, and I said to myself, why don't I use this as an opportunity to test my fit with the south East Asian market, run some workshops and meet some people in Hong Kong and Singapore? Cause yeah, why not? From now, I'm trusting my instincts and making decisions in a much more efficient way. This is what I'm planning.