Design Thinking × Systems Thinking : From “Winning Customer Commitment” to “Leading Business Ecosystem”

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Table of contents

Part 1: Rethinking the Innovation Frontier [Details]

Part 2: Why Human‑Centered Is Necessary but Still Has Potential to Grow [Details]

Part 3: The Pioneer Leadership Playbook – Systems Design Thinking [Details]

Part 4: From User Delight to Ecosystem‑Level Breakthrough [Details]

Part 5: Driving System‑Level Corporate Transformation [Details]

Part 6: Reference [Details]

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Part 1: Rethinking the Innovation Frontier

Over the past decade, Design Thinking (DT) has reshaped how leading organisations such as Airbnb, Samsung, HSBC, Tesla, Cathay Pacific, Huawei and even national governments approach innovation. DT asks leaders to balance what is desirable for people with what is feasible technologically and viable economically. As Figure 1 illustrates, this “deeply human, hands‑on” approach has pulled organisations much closer to customers’ lived realities (Brown, 2008; Liedtka, 2018).

In Hong Kong and mainland China, DT has evolved from a project‑level toolkit into a strategic management discipline. C‑suite teams are using DT to reframe growth agendas, de‑risk major investments, and orchestrate cross‑sector initiatives that reinforce long‑term competitive positioning in the region (Chung, 2022; Chung et al., 2022; Chung & Chung, 2018; Kan et al., 2019; Man & Chung, 2019).

However, many senior executives have discovered, even compelling human‑centred concepts encounter new spaces for improvement once they meet the full complexity of organisations, markets, and policy environments. For leaders who aspire not only to delight customers but also to shape the competitive context itself, the next frontier is the synergy of Design Thinking and Systems Thinking (DT×ST).

This integrated approach moves human-centered innovation from “designing experience” to redesigning the business ecosystem—enabling the firm to win customers’ life-long commitment while progressively leading the business ecosystem (Buchanan, 2019; Conway et al., 2017; Greene et al., 2017; Macagno et al., 2024; Pourdehnad et al., 2011).

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Part 2: Why Human‑Centered Is Necessary but Still Has Potential to Grow

Design Thinking is exceptionally effective for empathic problem framing, creative ideation, and rapid prototyping with users. It is a powerful engine for customer‑centric innovation. Yet, by design, DT tends to focus attention on the user experience. It may under-address the structural and systemic drivers—feedback loops, incentive structures, governance, data flows, and power dynamics—that determine what is possible for customers and for the organisation over time (Bansal & Birkinshaw, 2025; Jackson, 2024).

Systems Thinking (ST) complements this by viewing organisations, markets, and societies as complex adaptive systems with non‑linear cause‑and‑effect relationships (Bansal & Birkinshaw, 2025; Cabrera & Cabrera, 2023; Grewatsch et al., 2023; Jackson, 2024; Kim, 2023; Voulvoulis et al., 2022). ST surfaces:

• Reinforcing and balancing feedback loops
• Structural bottlenecks, lock‑ins and Path dependencies
• High‑leverage intervention points that conventional project logic rarely identifies

However, pure ST work can remain abstract and removed from customers’ lived experience (Mugadza & Marcus, 2019; Pourdehnad et al., 2011; Yang et al., 2022). The real strategic advantage comes when leadership synchronises the two—using DT to stay anchored in the human reality, and ST to intentionally steer the broader ecosystem that shapes that reality.

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Part 3: The Pioneer Leadership Playbook – Systems Design Thinking

Executives who operate “beyond human‑centred” work with an integrated DT×ST playbook. They keep all the strengths of DT, but extend them with a system‑level perspective that aligns innovation with an ambition to influence, and ultimately lead, the business ecosystem.

As Figure 2 illustrates, the familiar DT triad of desirability–feasibility–viability is retained. A fourth requirement, sustainability, is placed at the centre, surrounded by a holistic, analytical, system‑centric lens that captures complexity and interdependencies (Bansal & Birkinshaw, 2025; Jackson, 2024).

In practice, this integrated leadership approach can be understood as 4 mutually reinforcing moves:

• (1) Expand empathy from users to the entire ecosystem
  • DT immerses teams in the experiences of customers and end users. ST extends that lens to all critical stakeholders—frontline employees, regulators, distribution partners, suppliers, and communities—and to multiple forms of capital (financial, social, intellectual, and natural) (Du Toit et al., 2024; Mugadza & Marcus, 2019).
  • Senior leaders begin to see not only personas and journeys, but also the network of relationships, dependencies and trade‑offs behind those journeys. This is the basis for designing models that secure both customer loyalty and ecosystem alignment.

• (2) Reframe prototypes as ecosystem experiments
  • In classical DT, prototypes exist to test usability and desirability. In DT×ST, prototypes are designed as experiments at the ecosystem scale. Causal‑loop maps and system narratives indicate (Grewatsch et al., 2023; Jackson, 2024):
    • Where to intervene
    • Which assumptions to stress‑test
    • What data and signals to watch
    • Where unintended consequences are likely to appear
  • Pilots then become managed learning vehicles about how the system might evolve—revealing not just “does this solution work?”, but “how does this solution redistribute value, information, and risk across the ecosystem?”

• (3) Orchestrate portfolios, not pet projects
  • To lead an ecosystem, one flagship project is not enough. Executives shift from championing isolated initiatives to orchestrating a strategic portfolio of “safe‑to‑try” experiments across the value network (Conway et al., 2017).
    • ST informs where to place bets across different leverage points.
    • DT ensures each initiative is concrete, testable, and meaningful to people.
  • Over time, leadership can amplify emergent patterns that deliver both customer commitment and ecosystem advantage, while rapidly stopping or redesigning less effective efforts.

• (4) Lead systemically and transformatively
  • DT×ST leadership is reflective, purpose‑driven, and comfortable operating amid uncertainty and paradox (Macagno et al., 2024; Mugadza & Marcus, 2019). Such leaders:
    • Communicate a clear, compelling ecosystem‑level purpose that resonates with customers, employees, partners, and society
    • Build innovation mindsets and psychological safety, enabling candid engagement with complexity
    • Align structural changes—governance, incentives, metrics, partnerships, and technology—with long‑term sustainability and meaning
  • In this mode, leaders act less as owners of specific solutions and more as designers of the conditions under which superior solutions and robust ecosystems can emerge and scale.

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Part 4: From User Delight to Ecosystem‑Level Breakthrough

For senior executives, moving from stand‑alone DT to integrated DT×ST enables three forms of impact that are directly aligned with the ambition to win customer commitment and lead the business ecosystem (Buchanan, 2019; Conway et al., 2017; Du Toit et al., 2024; Greene et al., 2017; Macagno et al., 2024; Pourdehnad et al., 2011):

1. Scalability with ecosystem coherence
   • Solutions are conceived and tested in parallel with the operating, data, and policy environments required for their success. This dramatically narrows the classic gap between pilot‑level wins and system‑wide adoption.
   • Rather than fighting the ecosystem, leaders progressively reshape its standards, platforms, and norms so that their customer‑centric innovations become embedded as the default way of doing business.
2. Strategic sustainability and licence to grow
   • By incorporating system‑level economic, social, and environmental consequences into early design decisions, executives can pursue growth paths that create, rather than consume, long‑term value.
   • This strengthens not only customer loyalty, but also the trust of regulators, communities, employees, and partners, reinforcing the organisation’s licence to grow and its ability to influence future “rules of the game”.
3. Ecosystem‑savvy, resilient innovation capability
   • Continuous, evidence‑informed experimentation across the system builds adaptive capacity. The organisation learns to adjust offerings, partnerships, and structures as contexts evolve, without losing strategic direction.
   • DT×ST institutionalises a way of working that is:
     • Deeply anchored in customer realities
     • Analytically rigorous at the system level
     • Open to emergent opportunities and intelligent risk‑taking
   • This positions the firm not just as a fast follower, but as a credible agenda‑setter in its ecosystem.

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Part 5: Transforming the Enterprise and Its Ecosystem

Leaders who deliberately fuse design thinking with systems thinking do more than craft superior customer experiences; they reshape the business ecosystems that determine what is possible for those customers—and for their firms—over time. They add sustainability, systemic coherence, and ecosystem leadership to the traditional trio of desirability, feasibility, and viability. By embracing both:

• the deeply human, hands‑on nature of Design Thinking
• the holistic, analytical, system‑centric insight of Systems Thinking

Innovative leaders can create durable spaces for breakthrough performance that competitors find difficult to imitate. In an era where advantage increasingly comes from platforms, networks, and ecosystems, the strategic synergy of Design Thinking × Systems Thinking is becoming a defining capability for leaders who aim not merely to compete, but to lead.

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Part 6: Reference

1. Bansal, T., & Birkinshaw, J. (2025, September–October). Why you need systems thinking now. Harvard Business Review.
2. Brown, T. (2008). Design thinking. Harvard business review, 86(6), 84.
3. Buchanan, R. (2019). Systems thinking and design thinking: The search for principles in the world we are making. She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, 5(2), 85-104.
4. Cabrera, D., & Cabrera, L. (2023). What is systems thinking? In Learning, design, and technology: An international compendium of theory, research, practice, and policy (pp. 1495-1522). Springer.
5. Conway, R., Masters, J., & Thorold, J. (2017). From design thinking to systems change. How to invest in innovation for social impact. RSA Action and Research Centre.
6. Crilly, N. (2024). Design Thinking and Other Approaches: How Different Disciplines See, Think and Act. Cambridge University Press.
7. Chung, D. (2022). Creating a caring experience for passengers with special needs in the public transportation. In Design Thinking Business CaseBook 2022 (pp. 21 to 24). Vocational Training Council (Business Discipline), Hong Kong SAR Government.
8. Chung, D., Choi, Y., Lee, P., Lee, S., & Liu, T. (2022). Creating a memorable experience for Kwun Tong Yue Man Hawker Bazaar. In Design Thinking Business CaseBook 2022 (pp. 17 to 20). Vocational Training Council (Business Discipline), Hong Kong SAR Government.
9. Chung, G., & Chung, D. (2018). WOW the Hospitality Customers: Transforming Innovation into Performance Through Design Thinking and Human Performance Technology. Performance improvement (International Society for Performance Improvement), 57(2), 14-25.
10. Du Toit, E., Marx, B., & Smith, R. J. (2024). Delineating the parameters of integrated thinking: A synthetic literature review. Journal of Economic and Financial Sciences, 17(1), 891.
11. Greene, M. T., Gonzalez, R., Papalambros, P. Y., & McGowan, A.-M. (2017). Design thinking vs. systems thinking for engineering design: what’s the difference. 21st International Conference on Engineering Design,
12. Grewatsch, S., Kennedy, S., & Bansal, P. (2023). Tackling wicked problems in strategic management with systems thinking. Strategic Organization, 21(3), 721-732.
13. Jackson, M. C. (2024). Critical systems thinking: A practitioner’s guide. John Wiley & Sons.
14. Kan, S., Chung, D., & Chung, G. (2019). Customer Experience Transformation in the Aviation Industry: Business Strategy Realization through Design Thinking, Innovation Management, and HPT. Performance improvement (International Society for Performance Improvement), 58(1), 13-30.
15. Kim, B. (2023). Systems design thinking for social innovation: a learning perspective. Business and Society Review, 128(2), 217-250.
16. Liedtka, J. (2018). Why design thinking works. Harvard business review, 96(5), 72-79.
17. Macagno, T., Nguyen-Quoc, A., & Jarvis, S. P. (2024). Nurturing sustainability changemakers through transformative learning using design thinking: Evidence from an exploratory qualitative study. Sustainability, 16(3), 1243.
18. Man, I., & Chung, D. (2019). Creating Unlimited Business Opportunities for an Insurance Sales Force Through Design Thinking. In Cases on Learning Design and Human Performance Technology (pp. 287-304). IGI Global.
19. Mugadza, G., & Marcus, R. (2019). A systems thinking and design thinking approach to leadership. Expert journal of business and management, 7(1), 1-10.
20. Pourdehnad, J., Wexler, E. R., & Wilson, D. V. (2011). Integrating systems thinking and design thinking. The Systems Thinker, 22(9), 2-6.
21. Voulvoulis, N., Giakoumis, T., Hunt, C., Kioupi, V., Petrou, N., Souliotis, I., & Vaghela, C. (2022). Systems thinking as a paradigm shift for sustainability transformation. Global Environmental Change, 75, 102544.
22. Yang, C., Zhang, L., & Wei, W. (2022). The influence of introducing the concept of sustainable system design thinking on consumer cognition: A designer’s perspective. Systems, 10(4), 85.

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