Pour faire face à la crise Procter devient une entreprise "Customer Experience Thinking"

Dès son arrivée à la tête de la société en 2005, A.G. Lafley déclarait « that design, not simply price or technology, should be Procter Gamble's key differentiator. Here's his take on his radical attempt to put design "into the DNA" of PG. We have to create a great experience every time you touch the brand, and the design is a really big part of creating the experience and the emotion. We try to make [a customer's experience] better, but better in her terms. If you stay focused on experiences, I think you will have a lower risk of designing something that may measure well in a lab but may not do well with the consumer. I want PG to become the number-one consumer-design company in the world, so we need to be able to make it part of our strategy. We need to make it part of our innovation process.«
En 2008, l’orientation « design thinking » est au cœur de la stratégie pour sortir des difficultés économiques actuelles. Et cette approche concerne l’ensemble des actes de l’entreprise et non plus seulement l’innovation produit.
"It has been transformative for our leadership teams," says Cindy Tripp, marketing director at PG Global Design, as she describes her work rolling out the company's Design Thinking Initiative. With a cadre of 100 internal facilitators, more than 40 design thinking workshops have been held in PG business units across the globe during 2008. The design thinking facilitation team comes from every function at PG (such as marketing, research and development, info tech, and product supply as well as design)."
Le plus important c'est que le design concerne tout ce qui peut changer l'expérience d'un client et non plus seulement le produit : "Perhaps most important, half of the workshops focused on something other than new product initiatives to include other types of pressing business issues such as strategy, retail relationship building, and matters of operational excellence. "We want people to use these techniques daily in their work—using broad insights; learning faster; failing faster. Design thinking can be applied everywhere, every day," says Tripp.
Et ceci change totalement la manière de réflechir et d’imaginer les solutions de demain
"The analytical process we typically use to do our work—understand the problem and alternatives; develop several ideas; and do a final external check with the customer—gets flipped. Instead, design thinking methods instruct: There's an opportunity somewhere in this neighborhood; use a broader consumer context to inform the opportunity; brainstorm a large quantity of fresh ideas; and co-create and iterate using low-resolution prototypes with that consumer.
Dans son nouveau bouquin The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth with Innovation, Procter Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley explique la différence entre les deux méthodes : "Business schools tend to focus on inductive thinking (based on directly observable facts) and deductive thinking (logic and analysis, typically based on past evidence)," - Il écrit ensuite "Design schools emphasize abductive thinking—imagining what could be possible. This new thinking approach helps us challenge assumed constraints and add to ideas, versus discouraging them."