Image by Freepik.
Design thinking
The design thinking philosophy is currently very popular and is often applied in an entrepreneurial setting. Similar to marketing theory it starts with empathising with the customer’s lifeworld to uncover challenges and frustrations, and then prioritizes these (define phase), similar to the identification of strategic issues in the SWOT.
Where it differs from the traditional marketing approach is the creative setting and exercises in various phases. In particular, design thinking workshops help employees from different departments within a company to start a series of brainstorm sessions where creative ideas are channeled through various phases. The workshops serve as a pressure cooker to generate new and out-of-the-box solutions to customer problems, which are then developed into a set of feasible and more unconventional marketing concepts (ideate phase) and, eventually, prototypes.