A Design Mindset of a design thinker

SOURCE: BusinessWeek
September 3, 2008, 10:39AM EST

POD CAST with Robert Brunner – Director of Industrial Design for APPLE and co-author of a new book that looks at the way great design can make people love a brand, discusses how companies such as Apple, BMW, and Target use design to establish lasting and lucrative relationships with customers.

"Their theory is simple: Successful executives should treat design as more than a finishing discipline that simply improves products' aesthetics. Instead, design should influence every aspect of customers' experiences." I had the time n pleasure to listen to the PodCast and note down some important things that he pointed out during the interview.
Here's what Robert Brunner has to say about "a design mindset of a design thinker"

Source: BusinessWeek Innovation of the Week
PodCast Source: Design That Matters - with Robert Brunner

A design mindset of a design thinker (not necessarily be a designer…) –

The idea of having a design mindset is you start with the experience you want to achieve or u believe u should achieve or you believe your company is all about .. and you work from that…… Other companies kinda do what they have to do and they get to the end and they have this experience and then they try to modify n tweak it and package it in a way that’s more accountable. The really great design companies n design thinkers start with that core thinking and the core ideas of the experience you want to create for people… that will really set the boundary conditions of the products that u develop. When you develop a product there are all kinds of things that go into it. Many are financially driven.. operationally driven… investment-driven… those are all important indeed…of course u gotta end up with something that meets the financial criteria… investment criteria or logistics criteria.. operational criteria or what u have as a company… but if people don’t connect with it and they don’t want it…. All those stuffs don’t matter…cause you’ll have something that you can’t sell. So what the really great people inherently understand is that … we are after an experience here.. and we are gonna work the system and mold the system to get the experience.. not we are gonna use our system and see what’s comes out and do our best. That’s the really core idea around a design thinking.