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An Exploratory Study on the Evolution of Design Thinking: Comparison of Apple

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Article  in  Design Management Journal · October 2013

DOI: 10.1111/dmj.12001

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 ARTICLE

An Exploratory Study on the

Evolution of Design Thinking:
Comparison of Apple and
Samsung
by YoungJoong Chang, Jaibeom Kim, and Jaewoo Joo

YoungJoong Chang Introduction

D esign thinking has long attracted considerable attention from academic

researchers. Ever since Herbert Simon (1969) first discussed design,
many researchers have attempted to validate the nature of design thinking in
the business context (Brown, 2008; Buchanan, 1992; Cross, 1990; Lawson,
2005; Liedtka, 2004; Martin, 1995; Rowe, 1987; Whitney, 2006). Currently,
Jaibeom Kim
two issues still remain unclear regarding prior work on the topic of design
thinking. First, design thinking is often intermingled with the process for how
designers work. According to one New York Times article (Rae-Dupree, 2008),
for example, design thinking is a combination of field research and
the generation of freewheeling ideas. Similarly, in a visionary piece on design in
BusinessWeek, Whitney (2006, p. 13) suggested that “design thinking can offer
greater, deeper, and faster insights into users’ lives to help businesses know
what to make in the first place.” Brown (2008) also views design thinking as a
Jaewoo Joo
methodology that covers the full spectrum of innovative activities with a
human-centered design ethos. Second, there has been little discussion of how
design thinking actually materializes in practice. Instead, a wide variety of
business cases are introduced, which in turn focuses on the outcomes of
design thinking and largely ignores how these outcomes are created and
achieved.
Here, we will address these two important issues—understanding and
application—of design thinking. First, our aim is to develop a model that
delivers a clearer understanding of the process of design thinking. In particular,
we go beyond the historically dominant framework of problem solving to
consider a new framework proposed by Martin (1995), namely, balancing

22 ª 2013 The Design Management Institute

intuitive thinking and analytic think-
ing. Second, we apply our framework
to team-level analysis and investigate
how design thinking can actually be
nurtured in organizations. Specifi-
cally, we deal with the different
decision-making processes observed in
two electronics corporations: Apple
and Samsung Electronics (hereinafter
referred to as Samsung).
The present work contributes to
the academic discussions on design
thinking in two ways. First, we
introduce a new perspective on design
thinking by incorporating some find-
ings in psychology. Psychologists
have conducted extensive studies and
concluded that people have dual
cognitive systems; these systems have
been called experiential-rational sys-
tems by some (Epstein, 1991) and
intuitive-analytic systems by others
(Tversky and Kahneman, 1974).
Note that most of the earlier works
on the topic sought to demonstrate
when and why one system was
superior over the other (Hogarth,
2001; Klayman and Brown, 1993),
but little discussion was directed
toward how people utilize these two
cognitive systems concurrently. Sec-
ond, as a level of analysis, we apply
design thinking not to individuals but
instead to teams. Note that the
existing literature on design thinking
has focused on how individuals
improve task performances by
adopting a new type of thinking
(Liedtka, 2004; Rowe, 1987; Simon,
1996). Therefore, we approach
design thinking through the lens of
team-level intuitive-analytic thinking
and view the thinking as an organi-
zational decision-making issue, rather
than an individual problem-solving
issue.
This article also provides practical
implications to managers interested in
implementing design thinking in their
organizations. Much evidence in the
management area supports the notion
that investing in designers and design
teams is well deserved. For example,
one study noted that a group of so-
called design-aware companies was
shown to outperform London’s FTSE
100 stock index over a period of several
years (Design Council, 2005).
Another found that firms with a high-
intensity focus on industrial design
(ID) have reported greater profits than
those with low ID intensity (Gemser
and Leenders, 2001). A third noted
that manufacturing firms rated highly
for the effectiveness of their industrial
design had recorded greater returns on
sales and assets than their less-effective
competitors, over a period of six years
(Hertenstein, Platt, and Veryzer,
2005). These findings, however, are
mute in terms of what managers
should do to maximize the benefits of
design thinking in business. There-
fore, we propose to investigate more
specific paths to achieve design think-
ing for innovation.
The remainder of this article is
organized into four sections. The first
section provides a brief review of the
literature that pertains to design
thinking and discusses two issues
regarding its application to teams. The
subsequent section explains design
thinking more deeply by combining it
with the innovation matrix proposed
by Verganti (2009). In the third
section, the evolution of design think-
ing is described, and a comparison is
made between Apple and Samsung in
terms of how each achieves design
thinking. The last section offers con-
clusions, academic contributions, and
managerial implications, as well as
noting some limitations.
Understanding design thinking
Framework
Historically, researchers have
adopted a problem-solving frame-
work when studying design thinking.
Because problem solving consists of
two primary tasks—identifying
problems and generating solutions—
researchers generally view design
thinking as a way of thinking that
enables people to identify problems
and generate solutions more effi-
ciently. Therefore, design thinking
involves asking the right questions
and choosing the right answers for
those questions (Simon, 1996),
moving back and forth between the
given problem and the testable pro-
posals they have in mind (Rowe,
1987), and addressing “wicked prob-
lems” elegantly (Liedtka, 2004).
More recently, however, some
researchers have attempted to
understand design thinking from the
perspective of intuitive-analytic
thinking. For instance, in his book
The Business of Design, Roger Martin
23
 Design Management Journal
(1995) argues that delivering mean-
ingful experiences to consumers
requires two types of thinking. He
posits that managers first identify
business opportunities intuitively and
then establish business systems ana-
lytically, thus suggesting that balanc-
ing the two types of thinking can be
one of the key drivers to achieve
commercial success. Martin’s model
of design thinking can be summarized
as follows: To begin with, a majority
of human beings, including scientists
and artists, use both intuitive and
analytic thinking, but when either
type of thinking dominates, the result
may not be considered to be design
thinking. Therefore, to realize design
thinking, it is critical for intuitive and
analytic thinking to be balanced. Yet,
these two types of thinking do not
often mingle well due to significant
differences in each. Strategies, there-
fore, are needed to reach a conver-
gence or harmony for design
thinking. We can identify the above
strategies by attentively observing the
strategies of very successful compa-
nies.
We believe Martin’s argument
differs from other arguments that
place greater weight on intuitive
thinking than on analytic thinking.
For example, Sutton (2004) claims
that organizations should explore new
ways rather than exploit old ways in
order to chase unusual ideas with
which to innovate. Rieple (2004) also
reported that design managers
achieved higher scores on Kirton’s
Adaptation/Innovation Inventory
24
(KAI) than other professionals did,
including general managers and those
in finance and marketing.
To approach Martin’s design
thinking from the viewpoint of design
meaning, we need to understand that
his idea has clearly expressed the core
meaning of design from the holistic/
integrative perspectives. According to
a comprehensive review by Cooper
and Press (1995), design represents
the shift from art and creativity to
problem-solving and planning pro-
cesses. Some representations, such as
art and creativity, depend heavily on
intuitive thinking, while others, such
as problem-solving and planning
processes, rely mostly on analytic
thinking. Put differently, Martin’s
conceptualization of design thinking
represents the diverse definitions of
design in a thinking way (Figure 1).
Unit of analysis
Design thinking can be applied not
only to individuals but also to teams.
An individual design thinker can
balance these two different types of
thinking. Alternatively, a design-
thinking firm can balance two teams,
Figure 1. Design thinking (Martin 1995).
each of which pursues a different
type of thinking. Ideally, individual
employees balance two types of
thinking and then their firms balance
two types of thinking. However, this
is not always the case. Instead, a firm
may concentrate on one level of
design thinking more than the other
depending on several factors, includ-
ing the size of the firm. For example,
when a small or medium-sized design
consulting firm has only a handful of
talented employees who work across
functions such as planning, design,
finance, and marketing (e.g., Jump
Associates or Rotman Designworks),
the firm may pursue design thinking
primarily on the individual level. On
the other hand, when a firm has a
large number of employees who
belong to function-oriented multiple
teams (e.g., Apple or Samsung), the
firm may pursue team-level design
thinking instead. Following Martin
(1995), we mainly deal with team-
level design thinking in the present
work.
When studying team-level
design thinking, we face two chal-
lenging questions. First, which team
 Evolution of Design Thinking

is intuitive, and which team is ana- Combining design thinking with an teams, such as manufacturing teams,
lytic? In general, a new product innovation matrix take full responsibility for improving
development project requires multi- In order to understand design think- technology. This would imply that we
ple teams, including a design team ing further, we combine it here with can map two types of thinking onto
and a manufacturing team. The the innovation matrix proposed by the two drivers of innovation. This
former team plays a role in develop- Verganti (2009). Carefully collecting mapping also suggests that when a
ing the industrial design concepts, and analyzing the firms that success- firm balances intuitive and analytic
and building and testing the experi- fully use design to innovate, Verganti thinking, it also balances meaning and
mental prototypes, while the latter (2009) concluded that design-driven technology. For example, when a firm
generally defines piece-part produc- innovation does not necessarily result belongs to the “technology-push”
tion processes and refines that fabri- from cutting-edge technology; category and has advanced technolo-
cation (Ulrich and Eppinger, 2012). instead, it is often driven by assigning gies but relatively old-fashioned
Because the first group of tasks new meanings to existing products or meanings, it will not achieve design
requires intuitive thinking more services. Accordingly, he classified thinking. Alternatively, design think-
intensively than the second, we radical innovation strategies into ing is not achieved when a firm
assume here that a design team is a three groups—technology push, design- belongs to the “design-driven” cate-
representative example of an intuitive driven, and technology epiphany— gory, which is characterized by fresh
team and a manufacturing team is a depending on the level of technology meanings with outdated technologies.
representative example of an analytic and meaning involved (Figure 2). Only when a firm belongs to the
team. Verganti (2009) noted that “technology epiphany” category will it
Second, do two teams need to be intuitive teams, such as design teams, assign new meanings to new technol-
the same size when balance is are often asked to assign new mean- ogies and thus achieve design thinking
achieved? In general, the intuitive ings to products, whereas analytic (Figure 3).
team that produces the concepts does
not have to grow as much as the
analytic team that manufactures and
delivers final products does. The
performance of the intuitive team
often depends on fresh ideas gener-
ated from a few talented employees;
the performance of the analytic team,
however, is strictly tied to number of
employees. This difference implies
that achieving design thinking at the
team level does not necessarily sug-
gest that the two teams should be
equal in size; instead, when balance is
achieved, both should be able to
make their own independent deci-
sions and have the same level of
decision-making power. Figure 2. Innovation matrix (Verganti 2009).

25
 Design Management Journal
Figure 3. Combining design thinking with the innovation matrix.
Figure 4. Design thinking in the beginning of business.
Evolving design thinking
We propose that a firm selects differ-
ent paths to achieve design thinking
depending on two variables, namely,
environmental dynamics and firm capa-
bilities. Environmental dynamics indi-
cates the degree to which an
environment, or a market, is dynamic
(i.e., characterized by continuous
change). Some products, such as fur-
niture, have less exposure to technical
changes, whereas others, such as elec-
tronics, change their characteristics
often and in volatile ways. Firm capa-
bilities describes the way in which a
firm resolves conflicts between teams.
Some firms resolve conflicts by pro-
moting communications between
teams internally; others resolve them
26
by adopting an external team and
giving it the decision-making power
that dominates the existing teams.
What these external teams might be
like and how they might be adopted
are discussed in more detail in the final
section of this article.
Before discussing the two vari-
ables and explaining different paths,
we begin with how design thinking
looks at the beginning moment of a
business. When examining the incep-
tion of many commercially successful
firms, we found that their success can
often be attributed to individual-level
design thinking: In other words, a few
individuals in these firms identified
specific business opportunities and
then established related business sys-
tems. Examples include three young
students who founded a firm named
Rovio Entertainment—which gave us
the globally successful game “Angry
Birds.”
As a firm grows, managers want
to optimize the firm’s manufacturing
processes in order to achieve greater
efficiency. Because managers focus on
business performance, they tend to
support manufacturing teams rather
than design teams, which in turn
results in an imbalance between
intuitive and analytic teams. How-
ever, managers are eventually forced
to provide their consumers with
differentiated products and mean-
ingful experiences rather than opti-
mally manufactured products; that
is, these managers struggle with bal-
ancing the intuitive and the analytic.
Firms can address this issue in
different ways, but we feel that at this
stage, managers should select one of
three paths—design driven, technol-
ogy push, or technology epiphany—
after considering environmental
dynamics and firm capabilities. We
explain each path in detail in the
following sections (Figure 5).
The design-driven path
When the business environment is
not dynamic and its changes are
minimal, managers have ample
opportunities for trial and error to
learn how to grow two teams without
destroying the balance. In such a
context, the intuitive team and the
analytic team maintain the balance of
their decision-making powers; the
intuitive team makes business deci-

Figure 5. Three paths of design thinking.
sions independently and its decisions
can be implemented in the business.
Because the design-driven path
requires extensive learning, the firms
that select this path generally have a
long history of appreciating the value
of design. Often, they have continu-
ously produced design-oriented
innovative products that function
well and, therefore, develop their own
sustainable design thinking cultures.
A representative example of the firms
that have adopted this path is Her-
man Miller, described in the follow-
ing quote from Roger Martin’s
(1995) book The Design of Business:
The designer was to retain absolute
control over the production of his
creations. The manufacturer would
not be allowed to change the
mechanics or appearance of a design
to the slightest degree. The De Prees
knew they had to assert the legiti-
macy of validity in a reliability-
oriented environment. Market
research, sales, and manufacturing
would tilt toward reliability if given a
chance. “Valid design” needed top
management to provide the counter-
weight. Hugh De Pree helped estab-
lish the authority of design by
defining it. (Martin, 1995, p. 113)
Notice that the actual balance
and the perceived balance between
the intuitive team and the analytic
team can differ in terms of their
decision-making powers. We
demonstrate this difference with two
figures: Figure 6A-a is the design-
driven path viewed inside the firm;
and Figure 6A-b is the same path,
viewed outside the firm. Although
firms should achieve and maintain an
exact balance to develop successful
innovative products (e.g., Herman
Miller’s chairs), people outside the
Evolution of Design Thinking
firm perceive that the analytic team
enjoys stronger decision-making
powers than the intuitive team. This
is because, as Martin argues, the
analytic teams generally enjoy stron-
ger decision-making powers than the
intuitive teams, and the effort to
balance their powers looks like the
addition of powers to the intuitive
teams by taking powers away from the
analytic teams. In sum, on the design-
driven path, the intuitive team is
perceived to be stronger than the
analytic team, but this is not actually
so.
The technology-push path
Stage 1. As firms expand, they
need to scale their analytic team
upward to efficiently manage short-
term performance and complex
organizational structure. Growth in
the size of the analytic team can
27
 Design Management Journal
Figure 6. Design-driven path.
result in several changes that are
related to the intuitive team. Design
thinking that once worked at an
individual level will now have more to
do with the team level because the
scope and size of the tasks grow.
When tasks become bigger, they
cannot be performed by individuals
but should be managed by teams
with multiple members.
At this stage, two forces oper-
ate between the analytic and the
28
intuitive teams. The first force
works vertically and enables the
scale and the power of the analytic
team in its decision making. The
second force works horizontally to
alienate both the analytic and the
intuitive teams from each other due
to their heterogeneous characteris-
tics. The result produces firms that
can be competitive on price but
offer little in creative innovation.
Notable examples at this stage
include Samsung and LG in the
1990s.
When the business environment
is dynamic and experiences constant
and significant changes, managers
have limited opportunities to nurture
two teams harmoniously. In this
context, managers can mechanically
pull the two teams together with the
belief that both teams are capable of
achieving an internal balance in the
firm (Figure 7).
Stage 2. In experience economies,
design-driven innovation that focuses
on innovation in meaning constitutes
the core competitiveness of the firm.
To gain the above competitiveness,
firms need to appreciate the value of
the intuitive team, and are likely to
scale up its size or intensify ties with
design consultancies. (For instance,
the number of in-house designers at
Samsung increased from 200 in
the early 1990s to almost 1,000 in
2011.) A rapid expansion of the
design forces is the most visible index.
Yet, growth in size does not neces-
sarily imply qualitative changes, such
as an increase in power over decision
making. The analytic team may still
cast doubt on the intuitive team’s
decision making. Further, increasing
the size of the design team (the
intuitive team) can achieve significant
improvement in terms of the
appearance of the existing products.
However, doing so does not actually
contribute to developing innovative
products.
Because the technology-push
path requires extensive communica-

Figure 7. Stage 1 of the technology-push path.
tion between the two teams,
managers often increase the size of
the intuitive team and then arrange
a series of collaborative meetings
with the analytic team, thus aiming
to achieve a decision-making balance.
Because strengthening communica-
tions among marketing, engineering,
and manufacturing increases the
probability that newly developed
products succeed in their markets
(Griffin and Hauser, 1992), this
path provides a successful short-term
outcome (e.g., an increase in design
awards). Nurturing a collaborative
culture is challenging, however,
because the intuitive team and the
analytic team tend to perform the
same task in dramatically different
ways. Therefore, firms that select
this path often experience the so-
called “illusion of design thinking,”
in which creativity is sacrificed for
Figure 8. Stage 2 of the technology-push path.
efficiency and inter-team balance is
not established or maintained (Fig-
ure 8).
Stage 3-A. When the growth of
the intuitive team reaches a certain
level, the firm will realize that design-
driven innovation is actually quite
hard to achieve. This difficulty is
mainly due to a lack of cooperation
between the analytic team and the
intuitive team—a cooperation that
would not only enable the intuitive
team to better understand their ana-
lytic colleagues but would also bring
the analytic team closer to their
intuitive counterparts. The com-
pany’s chief executive officer (CEO),
ideally, should then acknowledge the
needs of both teams to work
together, and the firm itself will try to
maintain a state of design thinking
that is balanced properly between
analytic and intuitive.
Evolution of Design Thinking
At Stage 3, two different paths
emerge that lead to design thinking.
One is to arrange for the analytic and
intuitive teams to meet internally, as
demonstrated in Figure 9 (Stage 3-
A). The other (Stage 3-B, shown in
Figure 10) is to identify an individual
or a team that has reached the level
of design thinking and can work as an
intermediary toward helping the firm
itself reach that level.
Of both strategies above, a
majority of CEOs will opt for Stage
3-A, because this stage is faster and
easier to implement than Stage 3-B.
However, Stage 3-A has clear
limitations. It may allow the false
perception that the firm now has
reached the state of design thinking,
when that may not be the case.
Without sufficient mutual under-
standing, analytic and intuitive teams
will develop conflicts that may thwart
the emergence of truly innovative
design.
The roots of conflict between the
analytic and the intuitive teams at
Stage 3-A are due to contrasting
criteria for decision making. Both
teams need to enable decision making
at the design-thinking level. The firm
itself, aware of the possibilities for
conflict, will of course make con-
certed efforts to bring the teams into
agreement. Yet, if the coordination
mechanism is not powerful enough,
design thinking through mediation
may not be realized.
To conclude, strategies to reach
design thinking that combine and
integrate the intuitive and the
29
 Design Management Journal
Figure 9. Stage 3-A and technology-push path.
analytic teams may appear to be
successful, but those strategies reach
no better than Stage 2 in terms of
decision making.
Samsung is a good example of a
technology-push firm. Samsung has
been a late mover in the electronics
market. Responding to unparalleled
business challenges, the company first
expanded its design team from 200
designers in the late 1990s to 1,000
designers in 2011. Samsung has
made noticeable debuts in winning
several international design awards.
However, the company’s intuitive
and analytic teams needed to work
together closely before they were able
to deeply understand and appreciate
each other’s way of working. The
30
forced collaboration produced chal-
lenging decision-making conflicts—
the types of conflicts that are difficult
to resolve without a moderator.
Instead, decisions were made
exclusively by the intuitive team or
exclusively by the analytic team. This
issue explains why Samsung has
performed well in design awards, but
has not yet introduced an iconic
product like the iPhone.
The challenge is how to balance the
irresolvable tension between operat-
ing within the current knowledge
stage and moving through the
knowledge funnel. The tension can’t
be fully resolved but only balanced
and managed, because reliability and
validity are inherently incompatible.
(Martin, 1995, p. 37)
The technology-epiphany path
When the business environment is
dynamic and managers have limited
opportunities to learn how to manage
two teams harmoniously, they can
choose an option that does not
achieve balance internally but instead
adopts an independent, design-
thinking, coordinating team.
Because the technology-epiphany
path requires an independent team of
design-thinking experts, managers
have no interest in promoting inter-
team communication. Instead, they
allow the independent team to play
the role of the final decision maker
and to dominate business decisions. If
the independent team successfully
dominates and makes informed busi-
ness decisions, then this path allows
the two existing teams to reach an
amenable conclusion. When the
independent team fails to dominate
resistance from the two teams or fails
to make sound business decisions,
however, this path can bring serious
damage to the firm when conflicts
remain unresolved.
A representative example of the
firms that follow the technology-
epiphany path is Apple. Apple has
undergone both Stages 3-A and 3-B.
Apple is the most notable company
related to the three paths that we
have elaborated on here.
Apple approaches design think-
ing differently from Samsung. Its
design team does not communicate

Figure 10. Stage 3-B and technology-epiphany path.
with its manufacturing team. Instead,
an independent team (consisting of
Steve Jobs and his supporters) made
most of the firm’s business decisions.
In the process, Jobs limited the
decision-making power of the ana-
lytic teams in order for them to be
comparable with the power of the
intuitive team. Note that although
Steve Jobs was often criticized for his
assertive decisions, he did free the
intuitive team from the analytic team.
As a result, Apple products are
welcomed by a massive number of
Evolution of Design Thinking
consumers—even though their indi- essential to making the Macintosh
vidual features do not necessarily amazing. (Isaacson, 2011, p. 134)
outperform the products manufac-
tured by their competitors (including
But then he paused to recognize the
Samsung).
role Jobs in fact played. “In so many
other companies, ideas and great
“It was going to be thrown in the trash
design team would have been com-
as soon as the consumer opened it, but
pletely irrelevant, nowhere, if Steve
he was obsessed by how it looked.” To
hadn’t been here to push us, work
Rossmann, this showed a lack of
with us, and drive through all the
balance; money was being spent on
resistance to turn our ideas into
expensive packaging while they were
products.” (Isaacson, 2011, p. 347)
trying to save money on the memory
(Figure 11)
chips. But for Jobs, each detail was
31
 Design Management Journal

Figure 11. Apple’s technology-epiphany path.

Figure 12. iPhone versus Galaxy.

Conclusion design thinking. We defined team- teams, combined this framework with
In the present work, we aimed to level design thinking as achieving a the innovation matrix, and applied
understand and apply the concept of balance between intuitive and analytic the framework to the business cases of

32

Apple and Samsung. We posited that
managers consider environmental
dynamics and firm capabilities when
selecting one of the three paths: the
design-driven path; the technology-
push path; and the technology-epiph-
any path.
We described each path in detail,
using one firm for each path as an
example: Herman Miller, Samsung,
and Apple. In particular, we empha-
sized that Samsung and Apple have
chosen significantly different paths.
Samsung has mixed the intuitive and
the analytic teams, whereas Apple
adopted an independent design-
thinking team (see Figure 12).
This article makes three aca-
demic contributions to the ongoing
discussions on design thinking. First,
we go beyond mere problem solving
to conceptualize design thinking
through the lens of intuitive-analytic
thinking (Martin, 1995). Second, we
apply design thinking to teams and
combine that conceptual thinking
with the innovation matrix to develop
a deeper understanding of design
thinking (Verganti, 2009). Finally,
we review real-world business cases
and identify multiple paths of design
thinking by considering an environ-
mental variable and a firm variable,
further suggesting that design think-
ing in firms can be achieved in
multiple ways.
This article also provides prac-
tical implications for managers who
want to use design thinking and
facilitate the process of innovation. In
order to select an appropriate path,
managers should first assess environ-
mental dynamics and firm capabili-
ties. When the environment is less
dynamic, they should favor the
design-driven path. However, when
the environment presents constant
and significant changes, a firm should
adopt the technology-push path or
the technology-epiphany path,
depending on that firm’s capabilities.
We additionally offer specific
suggestions to those managers who
find the technology-epiphany path to
be optimal. These managers should
consider the following steps:
• Identify and choose a qualified
independent design-thinking
coordinator.
• Support this independent coor-
dinator’s decisions and protect
her or him from the existing
teams.
• Keep track of the business per-
formance achieved through the
coordinator’s decisions.
• Replace the coordinator with a
new coordinator, if necessary.
Note that this article has a
critical limitation, in that it at least
partly lacks empirical evidence to
support the proposed conceptual
approach. In the future, researchers
should further demonstrate the dif-
ferences between intuitive and ana-
lytic teams and develop a
measurement for team-level decision-
making styles. A good example is the
psychological research conducted on
information-processing styles at the
individual level (Mantel and Kardes,
Evolution of Design Thinking
1999). Further, researchers need to
collect more business cases in order
to clearly separate the two design-
thinking paths—technology-push
path and technology-epiphany
path—and then compare their
business performance outcomes to
identify the superior path. &
Reprint #13081CHA22
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Author biographies
YoungJoong Chang is a director-
general at Korea Foundation of
Design Association. He is a graduate
of Seoul National University and
Harvard University. He worked for
LG Electronics and Samsung Elec-
tronics as a designer before pursuing
his doctorate in design at Seoul
National University. He has lectured
in design management and design
marketing at several universities.
Jaibeom Kim is a professor of
international business at Sung-
kyunkwan University. He did his
graduate work (in marketing) at
Seoul National University, at
Cambridge University (in econom-
ics), and at Manchester Business
School (international business),
where he earned his PhD. He has
been a lecturer and an assistant
professor at King’s College, London,
the University of London, and a
visiting scholar at Stanford Univer-
sity. He is currently executive vice
president of the Korean Society of
Design Science.
Jaewoo Joo is an assistant
professor of marketing, College of
Business Administration, Kookmin
University. He holds a PhD in
marketing from Rotman School of
Management at the University of
Toronto and an MBA from Seoul
National University. He writes about
design and marketing through the
lens of the psychology of judgment
and decision making. He has been
invited to attend the National Sci-
ence Foundation’s interdisciplinary
design workshops and has served as a
panelist for BusinessWeek’s “World’s
Best Design Schools” issue.