I still don’t quite ‘get it’ but I suppose it’s something I should try to ‘get’. I’m talking about ‘design thinking’, a term used to signify a more ‘creative’ approach to business consulting being espoused by a growing band of consultancies, including Brazilian MJV. I had met MJV co-founder Ysmar Vianna, Ph. D. last September (see here) and have just caught up with his son (and co-founder), Mauricio Vianna, Ph. D, who patiently tried to explain to me (again) what ‘design thinking’ is all about (I am a slow learner).
Consulting (or as they call it, Business Innovation) is just one part of the MJV business, with the most part coming from more traditional IT services, and a smidgen from a newly established mobile integration platform division. MJV is also a business incubator and accelerator, built around its ’design thinking’ activities. That’s a lot of ‘stuff’ for a small company.
MJV has already recruited 4 consultants in their new UK office to start spreading the good word on ‘design thinking’. They certainly boast some marquee brands in Brazil and perhaps they can ‘follow the client’ here. But I suspect it will be a hard sell to convince other UK companies that this Brazilian consultancy can help them ‘design’ a better way of solving business problems – unless, of course, they already ‘get it’!