Responsible Design Thinking

Design thinking (DT) has generated significant attention in relation to new product development and innovation and, more generally, value creation activities. Despite its focus on identifying and addressing the needs of users and other stakeholders in an empathetic way, several implementations of DT have resulted in ethically questionable products with negative consequences for firms, customers, and society. This research adopts a grounded theory approach to understand the main ethical concerns with DT as currently practiced and to investigate how DT teams could better include ethical considerations in their work. Based on the analysis of data gathered from in-depth interviews with DT practitioners, it identifies four ethics-related blind spots caused by (1) the exclusion of the natural environment, (2) narrow definitions of users, (3) quick prototyping and testing, and (4) the rapid increase of scale. Using the development of a responsible AI product as an illustration, the authors show that firms can develop three interrelated capabilities to mitigate these blind spots: (1) systemic inclusion of impacted entities and stakeholders, (2) anticipation and mitigation of potential harms, and (3) ethical governance. Together, they form a novel approach: responsible design thinking. The article concludes by discussing contributions to theory and practice.

• 저널Journal of Marketing
• 토픽Ethics and Social Impacts of AI · Safety Research
• DOI10.1177/00222429251396423
• 저자Minu Kumar, Pietro Micheli, Jatinder Jit Singh, Neil Goldberg