The African Business Woman’s Guide to Applying Design Thinking

In order to generate good ideas and foster real innovation, you need to seek out human interaction. By learning about others’ experiences and lifestyles, entrepreneurs can identify specific problems and begin brainstorming solutions. Design thinking is a problem-solving approach that prioritizes the customer’s or user’s needs. It is using empathy to observe how people interact with the environment and each other. 

Why is design thinking different from regular problem-solving? It allows you to experiment and refine your solution until your customers are satisfied. Design thinking is often described as being “human-centered” since it uses evidence of how consumers (humans) engage with a product or service rather than how someone else or an organization imagines or thinks they will engage with it.

Design thinking is a little-known secret weapon for African women entrepreneurs. Africa has infrastructure vacuums that force leaders and businesses to be creative in solving their customer’s problems. While the less-defined structures can hinder exponential growth, they present an opportunity for disruption and innovation. Small businesses can spearhead this area of transformation due to their ability to change and adapt quickly to feedback. 

Start Where You Are

In our ‘Awake With AWEC’ series on Instagram, we recently interviewed AWEC alumna Kimani Purity, an industrial chemist, and cosmetics manufacturer, who has used design thinking to grow her business. In an hour-long conversation, we discussed how small businesses have a huge advantage over larger companies when it comes to human-centered design. 

SMEs have direct and easy access to their customers, making strategic conversations easier and providing more opportunities to solicit feedback. Conversations and access are the backbones to design thinking. Therefore, small businesses need to explore the advantages available to them. 

Kimani further urged small businesses to start now. “You don’t need a million-dollar budget to practice design thinking. It’s really about strategic knowledge acquisition. Observe the people you interact with.” 

She also shared a few tips on using design thinking in business:

• The knowledge you acquire helps you develop ideas that you implement to offer better products and services. When you feel there’s a problem in your business process, observe what is happening and, given the insights, eliminate waste early before you scale. 

• Don’t be afraid of feedback. Listen to your customers, employees, and experts who can lead you on what to do based on your observations. If you want your business to succeed, you can’t afford to let ego prevent you from seeking and acting on feedback. 

Educate Yourself

“Once you understand how important design thinking is for your business, make it a core value,” said Kimani. She stressed the importance of small business owners educating themselves on design thinking. After learning, choose a problem to solve, test out design thinking,  and ensure that it becomes an integral part of your business practice going forward. 

Key lessons from our conversation with Kimani include: 

• Seek out information and courses that teach you the basics of applying design thinking. 

• After learning, don’t fall into the trap of overthinking. It’s easy to get stuck at the planning phase to perfect your approach before going to the next step. When your plan is good enough, go to the field immediately. 

• Avoid striving for perfection; test something. You have to try your ideas, get some insights and use the insights to improve your strategy. 

African small business owners have an opportunity to create innovative products uniquely tailored to the needs of the African market. When more business owners embrace design thinking, we will start seeing an influx of homegrown innovation and solutions. 

Goods and services manufactured and offered by foreign companies often struggle on the continent because they are unfamiliar with the nuances of the local communities. You could be one test away from a hit product. Go out and use design thinking in your business today.