Extract

Design thinking is widely known as a creativity and innovation method among management disciplines and practitioners. While creative design disciplines have benefited from the rising awareness and application, the discipline of architecture has not embedded this development with an approach of its own, despite being at the forefront of designerly ways of working and design thinking as a mind-set. To assist architects in contributing and applying their particular form of design thinking, to foster entrepreneurial initiatives and to reduce the gap between architectural practice and other practices of design thinking, four different creativity formats based on existing methods have been evaluated at the Department of Architecture at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). The results provide a critical view of practiced phase-structured creativity formats for innovation. The key findings provide directions to develop an architectural design thinking approach, which is applicable to industries and challenges beyond building design and can re-integrate design expertise and meaning in the quest for innovation.

Keywords: design thinking; architecture; methods; innovation

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