by Rebecca Cochran

It was an honor to present the North Carolina screening premiere of Design & Thinking documentary in Greensboro on Monday, June 4. Sponsored by Quaintance-Weaver Restaurants & Hotels and Syngenta, the event took place in the Hawkins Brown Room at the elegant O. Henry Hotel. The evening began with drinks and networking as guests began to gather. By 7:15 pm, the approximately 35 guests had arrived and seated themselves at tables facing the upcoming action. Attendees included designers of all ilks, university types, marketing professionals, artists, musicians, architects, scientists, corporate managers, small business owners and non-profit leaders from throughout the North Carolina Piedmont Triad area.

As co-host and designer/owner of Cochran Creative Group, I was pleased to make a few opening remarks. They included:

I first heard the term ‘Design Thinking’ perhaps 4 or 5 years ago. As a designer, I was immediately intrigued. I took it upon myself to read everything I could find on the subject. Then, in late 2010, I had the opportunity to attend a conference on Design Thinking in Toronto. Over the course of 2 days there, I heard many proponents of design thinking share their thoughts. The standout for me was a keynote by Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto. (You’ll hear from him in this film.) I felt as if Roger looked right at me in the audience that day and said (about himself, of course), “I’m a designer. I don’t design things. I design ideas.” I felt that statement described me, as well. That one statement gave me a new-found confidence around what I do for a living.

The documentary you’re about to see, Design & Thinking, is a production of One Time Studio, consisting of a group of 4 young Taiwanese designers who met at the Taipei Design Center U.S. in San Francisco. They were interested in the topic of design thinking and the challenges of blending their various expertise and cross-cultural perspectives.

One Time Studio raised all of the funds to produce the film via KickStarter, the online funding platform for creative projects. I was curious, so I got online and looked at the pledge history for this project. Pledges started at a mere $1, with the majority of backers pledging between $15 and $30. They surpassed their funding goal.

Design & Thinking had its world premiere at the Newport Beach Film Festival on April 28. Subsequent screenings have taken place in New York City, Dallas, Phoenix and Singapore. An internal screening took place at Google headquarters last week. I’m designing the T-shirt now: New York…Mountain View…Greensboro!

Next, I introduced Bill Knowles, head of Learning & Development at Syngenta, North America. Bill talked a bit about his experience with design thinking, having visited IDEO and worked with the Kelley brothers and Tim Brown. Bill described how he and colleague, Uri Hess, developed a course on design thinking that they deliver, globally, to Syngenta employees. The course is a component of Syngenta’s Breakthrough Innovation (BTI) course. Bill suggested that we take notes during the film, recording new ideas and concepts that we may be able to apply to our own work.

We then screened Design & Thinking. When the closing credits rolled by 75 minutes later, the entire room broke into spontaneous applause.

Bill encouraged each table to take about 10 minutes to discuss their impressions and share ideas. Later, he polled the tables and asked each group to share an idea or two that they could immediately take back to their work tomorrow. Lively discussions followed with many people making immediate connections on some of the design thinking concepts addressed in the film. Attendees left with new-found inspiration and an eagerness to learn more about design thinking. Each guest received a copy of the Design & Thinking Resource List we had compiled in advance. You can download it here.

Each day since the screening, I’ve been deluged with positive comments about the event and stories of how participants are already applying design thinking concepts to their work. We hope to host a follow-up event soon in affiliation with Idea Network, an informal group I founded in 2010.

Here are a few of the many excellent quotes from the all-star cast of thought leaders interviewed in the film:

“Your first idea won’t be your best idea.”

“Design is a participatory sport.”

“It’s not about the brief. It’s about what happens after the brief.”

“You have to do in order to know.”

“When design is reduced to a formula, we lose something.”

“In an ambiguous problem, you don’t know what you don’t know.”

“Design thinking is liberating.”

“Think crazy. Think wild.”

And, here’s an excerpt from today’s edition of Syngenta’s Connections newsletter, where the screening event is mentioned:

This week, a movie premiered in Greensboro, N.C., after receiving accolades at the recent Newport Beach Film Festival in California. How did Greensboro become the location for such an exciting event? Because of the influence of Bill Knowles, head, Learning and Development North America. The movie was titled Design and Thinking and was a documentary about a concept called ‘design thinking.’

“Design thinking is something I’ve been teaching at Syngenta and outside our organization for the last several years,” Bill shares. “It juxtaposes with innovation by bringing intuition together with analytical thought. It means going beyond what is and looking at what could be.”

When Bill heard about the film Design and Thinking, he saw it as the perfect opportunity to introduce the concept to other prominent businesses and universities in Greensboro.

Read more about the film here.

Please feel free to add your comments here if you attended the June 4 event. If you have questions on how to bring a design thinking event to your organization, please feel free to contact me.

This post was originally published in June, 2012.