In this presentation, the speaker shares a series of design‑thinking case studies that illustrate how reframing problems, deep user observation, rapid prototyping, and iterative testing can generate both social impact and measurable business ROI. The stories span public services (Singapore Ministry of Manpower’s employment‑pass process cut from hours to minutes), education (Peru’s Innova modular schools delivering triple‑national‑average math scores at low cost), sanitation (Unilever’s lease‑to‑own toilet units in Ghana that create micro‑entrepreneurship), food‑waste innovation (incubator turning bio‑waste into bioplastic), hospitality (InterContinental/Crowne Plaza co‑working spaces that serve travelers and locals), product redesign (Procter & Gamble’s Coast soap created after questioning the real consumer need), health care (palliative‑care shift from curing to relieving pain), consumer product color choice (boombox focus‑group paradox), and market entry (Mrs. Fields’ failed Japan launch). Each example highlights the design‑thinking process—empathy research, problem definition, ideation, prototyping, testing—and quantifies outcomes such as reduced wait times, cost per student, new revenue streams, or product sales, underscoring the tangible ROI of human‑centered innovation.
Chapters
One of my favorite design thinking examples was actually Ministry of Manpower in Singapore. I went to Singapore first to work about 22 years ago.. And back then, to get my little piece of plastic, my employment pass, I would have to take my laptop. I knew I would be there, and I couldn't miss that much work because it would— to get a little piece of plastic would take 4, 5, 6 hours. Now, 900 people go through that office in a day, so 900 people are missing half a day minimum, probably more, from work. And a lot of them are high-level executives. Now, how much productivity is lost every year by making people sit around if they don't take their laptop and they didn't know in advance? And what about people who come back and they have children? I took 4 kids through that process And they had to wait, and they had to wait, and they had to wait. Not a lot of fun. So in order to save productivity, make life a lot easier, and give a great impression of the nation to international business people who would go around the region saying, "You gotta do business here, it's wonderful here, they're amazing," Ministry of Manpower hired a design team, IDEO in fact, to redesign the whole thing. So they went there and experienced it. They talked to the kids, they talked to the people waiting, they talked to the people who work there, they ran the numbers. How much real estate does it cost and lighting and air conditioning to have people sitting around for 4, 5, 6 hours, etc. And here's what they came up with. Now, 90% of those 900 people per day are served in 10 minutes. You make an e-appointment, you go on time, someone greets you at the door, the kids go straight over to their toys, and the grown-ups are at the computer doing what needs to be done. In just a few minutes. Design Thinking is also responsible for the largest private network of schools in Peru. 29 schools, almost 20,000 students, 1,200 teachers, and growing. Now, anyone who has sent one of their kids to private school knows it's terribly expensive. Yes, they get great results, but it's more than a lot of families can afford. So the design team took a look at and talked to students, parents, teachers, community members. They saw how the school works today, they saw new technologies, they saw new physical setups, and they set up a modular school with blended learning, group learning, students help each other, teachers also help each other. Resources are online, the physical facility is modular and changeable. It's a great school, Innova Schools, and they earn 3 times the national average in math scores, twice the national average in communication, and it's only $130 a month. There's also a wonderful example of uberizing toilets, basically. With new product design and a new business model for Unilever to help 1 billion to 2.9 billion people worldwide who don't have adequate sanitation. When they went to a test center in Ghana, they found that there was high unemployment, a great deal of poverty, very little infrastructure. So if you haven't got water, you haven't got people to pay for existing toilets, What are you gonna do? They came up with a small sanitation unit which would partially biodegrade the material but did need servicing. Instead of having people buy the unit, because no one could afford it, they helped entrepreneurs set up sanitation businesses. Now, instead of buying a toilet and relying on the government to put in a water infrastructure, someday, you simply hire a sanitation service. Now small businesses are popping up everywhere, helping with what's a very real need, and the entrepreneurs themselves buy the units on a lease-to-own basis. There are some wonderful examples as well on food waste. I was absolutely stunned to find out that about a third of the food we produce every year just goes to waste. Now they've designed a number of interventions in schools, restaurants, and hotels, and even better, an incubator so that more people can come up with good ideas. One of the ideas that got funded was turning bio-waste into bio-plastic. Another example is the Intercontinental Hotels Crown Plaza. They found that this generation of business people is doing business differently, having informal meetings and wanting shared spaces and e-services and easier ways of printing and working in a, in a less structured and more collaborative manner. So for business travelers, they've set up facilities that are more attractive both to the travelers who want to have meetings and use temporary co-working spaces, but they have also found that people in the community who are not traveling also want to use their co-working spaces. Co-working and crowdsourcing are also very powerful ways of design thinking, getting ideas from everyone. Ideo.org, for example, has launched a number of social initiatives and had people volunteer working on virtual teams. It's a great way to get experience, and we get the best ideas from everyone. I was at a big international development bank a little while ago, and they shared with me this story. They felt it was a problem in one nation where they were working that there was so much time and effort spent getting water. It— ate up the days of the women in the community, so they decided to do something about it. They set aside money and put in a water infrastructure so these women would no longer have to carry water on their head long distances. They met with the community afterwards, and what did the women say? How could you do this to us? Is actually what they said, which the bankers didn't expect. They said, "Well, what do you mean, do to you?" We live in a conservative society. We serve our husbands and children and communities well. We are working all the time to do that. The only chance we get to get out of the house is to go get water, and when we do that, We can talk to our friends and borrow things and ask advice and arrange marriages and get medical recommendations. Now we're stuck at home. Thanks a lot. So having realized that the water system would impact more than just the economy or people's productive time, it would actually impact the society in unintended ways. Sadly, money was not set aside to maintain the infrastructure, and it fell into disrepair. And the bankers went back to the community and spoke to the women and said, "Okay, we're back where we started, and you still have a problem. What actually do you need and want?" What would actually help you? And they said, "Actually, water filters." A very big problem for us is that we bring back water not knowing that there are bad bugs in it that make our families sick. Then my husband can't go to the fields, my children can't learn, and I'm spending time taking care of health problems. We need safe water, but we need our social and informational infrastructures to remain intact. That the bankers could do. They set aside budget to give water filters and to teach the women how to make more. And that worked. So the challenge that they thought they were addressing was not actually the challenge that really needed solving. That brings to mind soap. It's a classic case from Procter Gamble. Colgate-Palmolive came up with a green striped bar of soap, and it took the market by storm. Everybody wanted this green striped bar of soap called Irish Spring. It made Procter Gamble pretty upset. Upset. So management put together a design team and said, go into the conference room, brainstorm, and come up with a better striped bar of soap. So the team did that. They came up with a striped bar of soap, maybe not better, actually definitely not better, because they took it out to a test market And people already had a striped bar of soap. The product failed. They went back to the drawing board. Okay, learn from your mistakes. Failure is okay. Go ahead. Made another striped bar of soap and took it out to a test market and it failed again. Then the third time they came back in, there was a new engineer who'd just been hired and assigned to the team, and he said said to them, "Why are we making striped bars of soap?" And the team said to him, "I don't know, we were told to." So he said, "Well, look, look, look, I hear that this has failed twice already, let's not do it again. Can I ask another why question? Why do people buy any particular bar of soap? What is it they want out of the shower experience? They thought about it, they said, "Ooh, well, wait a minute. Okay, so we want to be refreshed. When it's hot out, we want to cool off. We want to have a wonderful smell that reminds us of happy times." So He said, "Well, okay, let's brainstorm on that." So they brainstormed about why people would buy a particular bar of soap, what experience they want, what are all the things that would make them feel they chose Refreshed. Well, what makes you feel refreshed? A dip in the pool, cannonball, a dip in the ocean, A day at the beach, blue skies, picnic. So they put all the ideas together and came up with a smell and a look and an experience that made people feel like they were at the ocean being refreshed. Yes, they put blue striped stripes in the bar. And they test marketed it. It did really, really well. It never beat out Irish Spring, but it sold millions of bars. You may have heard of it. That's the backstory behind Coast. This reminds me of the story, another TED Talk, called "The Amazing Story of the Man Who Gave Us Modern Pain Relief." It was also the beginning of palliative care. Before this man's work, the mission of doctors was to make patients well. However, in so many cases, they can't. But even when you can't make a patient well, you can make a patient feel better. You can relieve the pain, you can relieve the symptoms. So a whole field opened up By changing the challenge to how might we make patients well, to how might we make patients feel well, it's a whole different challenge. So choose your challenges and be open to redefining them. One classic case that I love was when the boombox first came out. I believe it was Steve Jobs Sony, that didn't know what color to make a boombox. So they did a focus group. They had a discussion, and everybody said, look, we want to take the boombox out to picnics, and to the park, and to the beach. And it's all about lemonade, and picnics, and sunshine. And eventually, 100% of the focus group said yellow. The boombox should be yellow. It's happy. So the facilitator said to everybody, "Ah, super. Thank you, everybody. On your way out, please feel free to take a boombox. There's a whole stack of them outside, and thank you again for your time." One participant stayed back, and he had some questions for the facilitator, and then Questions answered, he left, and he came right back in and said, "Um, are there any more black boomboxes? Because they're all gone." Everyone passed up all the colors of boombox, including yellow, and took the black ones. So boomboxes were introduced in black. Another wonderful thing, and it's an example of people saying and doing different things, so you need to observe what they do, not just what they tell you. Mrs. Fields cookies. When they were expanding globally, Mrs. Fields thought that Japan would be a wonderful place to introduce her cookies. So she took a box of cookies and went to a meeting of some wonderful executives and business leaders in Tokyo. And so they had green tea at the meeting, they exchanged cards, they all sat down together, and the executive said to her, "We're very, very sorry, Mrs. Fields." but we're not the right market for your cookies. They're made from wheat products. Our diet is rice-based. We don't eat a lot of wheat. They're much sweeter than anything that we eat, so they really don't fit what people are used to. Um, also they contain a great deal of butter. We don't eat food that's is that oily? So you're wonderful and thank you for showing interest in our nation, but your cookies really won't sell here. And so she said to them, thank you, can I have my empty plate back? All the while that they had been telling her why these cookies will not sell in Japan and are inappropriate for the Japanese people, they ate all her cookies. So she went and she did just fine.
