Track: Operations Management

Abstract

Design Thinking as one of the approaches to collaborative identification and solving a problem has been highly recognized by practitioners and academics in providing potential value in enhancing innovative results for products, services, or strategies and is vastly recommended to be applied in Project Management. However, none of the empirical studies explores factors that influence Design Thinking adoption in the projects. This study covers this gap and explores several predictors that influence the adoption of Design Thinking in projects. With Diffusion of Innovation as the theoretical basis, data were collected from 106 project managers in Indonesia who are experienced in implementing Design Thinking in their projects. The findings suggest that innovation's perceived relative advantage, observability, and complexity significantly influence the adoption of Design Thinking. Contrary to finding in existing literature, perceived compatibility and trialability of Design Thinking have no influence on the adoption in the project. The education and tenure of the project manager are also found to do not moderate perceived complexity association towards the adoption of Design Thinking. This study contributes to organizations determining and developing strategies to maximize the use of Design Thinking in projects, thus increasing the chances of success in innovation projects.