This is the first DT101 Books episode. Karen Hold joins us on the show to talk about Experiencing Design: The Innovator’s Journey, a book she co-authored with Jeanne Liedtka and Jessica Eldridge. In DT101 Books episodes, authors explore why their book exists and what it will help you do. Each book is chosen because it has something that will help you think and solve like a designer as you learn, lead and apply design thinking.  Our Guest and Her Co-Authors Jeanne Liedtka is a faculty member at the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia. Her Columbia Business School Publishing books include Designing for Growth: A Manager’s Toolkit (2011) and Design Thinking for the Greater Good: Innovation in the Social Sector (2017). Karen Hold is the founder of Experience Labs, an innovation consulting firm. She is also the director of DT:DC, a design thinking community in Washington, DC, and a visiting professor at École des Ponts Business School in Paris, France. Jessica Eldridge is a consultant working at the intersection of educational equity and purposeful innovation. She is a specialist in design thinking, innovation management, and cross-sector collaboration.   About Experiencing Design: The Innovator’s Journey In daylong hackathons, design thinking seems deceptively easy. On the surface, it involves a set of seemingly simple activities such as gathering data, identifying insights, generating ideas, prototyping, and experimentation. But practiced at a superficial level, even great design tools don’t go deep enough to create the shifts in mindset and skill set that are required to achieve transformational impact.  Going deep with design requires more than changing the activities of innovators; it involves creating the conditions that shape who they become. Individuals become design thinkers by experiencing design. Drawing on decades of researching and teaching design thinking to people not trained in design, Jeanne Liedtka, Karen Hold, and Jessica Eldridge offer a guide for how to create these deep experiences at each stage of the design thinking journey, whether for an individual, a team, or an organization.  For each experience phase, they specify the mindset shifts and competencies that need to be achieved, describe how different personality types experience different kinds of journeys, and show how to fully leverage the diversity of teams. Experiencing Design explores both the science and practicalities of design and includes two assessment instruments for individual and organizational development. Ultimately, innovators need to be someone new to create something new. This book shows you how to use design thinking to make this happen.   Show Highlights [00:56] Dawan muses on trying to come up with a name for the podcast book episodes. [01:06] Michael Silverblatt as the one and only Bookworm. [02:07] Karen talks about the ideas and discussions that started the book-writing process. [02:51] Igniting the design spark (or not!) in the people she works with. [04:57] The book is for those already familiar with, and using, design thinking. [06:05] It’s intended to help design thinking users deepen their practice. [07:25] Different personality types experience design and design thinking differently. [08:11] Karen, Jeanne, and Jessica developed four Innovator Personalities. [08:20] You have to become someone new to make something new. [08:54] Karen gives an example from her time on the brand team at Folgers during the rise of Starbucks. [10:15] Quantitative versus qualitative research. [10:48] Biases in decision making. [13:47] Insights and sensemaking occurs gradually and purposefully. [15:04] Sensemaking involves learning from perspectives that are not our own. [18:00] The book provides a set of Minimum Viable Competencies (MVCs) – behaviors and indicators that help designers gauge skill and mindset improvement. [19:00] Karen discusses some of the MVCs found in the book. [20:00] Observation versu