The relationship between disability, design thinking, creativity and business is much closer than ... [+]
Heading into 2023 organizations are facing numerous challenges from inflation, and a thinner workforce, to confronting how to best engage the future of work. As companies navigate these new realities, it is imperative to ponder a trend that has always been a throughline within the modern disability narrative, the idea that resolution and problem-solving are the key ingredients to forward momentum. This type of thinking offers a whole new model that is pertinent for the business environment of the 21st Century and can help shape the behaviors that are critical in finding the path ahead.
Coming out of a pandemic into the shaky truth of today's business realities companies are struggling to gain stability and formulate a level of competitive advantage. The year ahead is rife with bigger questions, and it is time that we use 2023 as a point of departure to pivot and rethink the business narrative in earnest. As companies continue to regroup and examine their stance around areas such as diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility to talent management and the workplace, businesses must renew their desire for discovery. It is here that we can reignite the potential for robust growth and chart the course for future success.
So how is this done, what should the C-suite be looking for in this year ahead? We need to look for organizations that tend to embrace a design-thinking mentality and understand the true value it holds. Too often companies struggle with their own collective biases and fears, this is the moment to face them and recognize that to gain any level of forward momentum one must no longer have a failure of imagination, but rather lean into their creative intelligence to find the optimal solution for their business challenge.
The C-Suite must understand that design thinking, the modern disability narrative, and solution-oriented approaches all share a common refrain, the power of creativity to find better answers. It is this fusion of ideas that will be a vital trend to look for in the coming year. Utilizing creative intelligence through the guise of design thinking offers a connecting point where businesses across multiple verticals will find growth potential and demonstrate new opportunities for success.
If the C-suite and others across organizational culture can recognize the link between design thinking and the modern disability narrative, it opens a new vision across areas like the future of work. Seeing disability as synonymous with ingenuity galvanizes companies to engage the potential of the disability community to solve issues in areas such as talent management by pushing for a renewed interest in upskilling to workplace design and technological advancement in the age of remote work. Seeing the movement of the design thinking trend provides an avenue of growth for the disability community to share their value and significance in a practical sense across a global stage.
Another noteworthy aspect of design thinking that can have a monumental impact is that its use of creative intelligence unlocks the doors to the potential for leaders with disabilities to make a real difference in the future of business. Those with the lived experience of disability have an innate capacity to adapt, think creatively, and have the fortitude to deal with numerous challenges in an uncertain world. These are the skillsets needed for future leaders in the business of the digital economy. If organizations want this type of innovative leadership that will impact a company across the board, it is time to pull the levers of design thinking and make this a part of their ongoing strategic initiatives.
The year ahead offers businesses a new opportunity for reinvention. Savvy executives should be prepared to support design thinking not just as a trendline, but rather as an essential instrument of business practice. It is this very undertaking that will have profound effects in moving beyond best practices to the next practices that will disrupt the future of business and create a new metric of progress.
