Comstock's magazine 1119 - November 2019 | Page 74

n WORKPLACE
WANT TO GET YOUR FEET WET
Try the Spaghetti Marshmallow Challenge, a popular
activity used to introduce people to the concept
of prototype testing, a key step in design thinking.
The activity takes 45 minutes and can be found at
Stanford’s D.school website at https://stanford.
io/2mpIOZM.
Naiman has consulted for Fortune 500 companies, the
U.S. Navy and international government agencies since the
mid-1990s through her company, and she says companies
such as Cisco Systems, IBM and Proctor & Gamble have
delved heavily into design-thinking protocols.
“These organizations are looking for what is going to
give them a competitive advantage,” Naiman says. “Arts-
based learning is a way to access different capacities in the
brain that may have been dormant because of our linear,
left-brain way of learning. The reason design thinking has
become so popular over the past 20 years is major com-
panies noticed that design firms were doing well and that
they’re good at innovation. They wouldn’t be at the top of
their game without being innovative, and in order to be in-
novative, you have to be creative. Part of what makes you
creative and being an innovator is having the ability to ask
good questions, observe the world around you and discover
nonobvious patterns.”
DESIGN THINKING AIMS TO SOLVE PROBLEMS
That’s what Vazquez of InterTidal is getting at when he leads
an improv session. Often, he’s warned ahead of time that the
employees in the workshop are unlikely to let loose with co-
medic, sometimes silly, sketches in front of a crowd.
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comstocksmag.com | November 2019
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