Disruptive innovation in complex systems: The ambition of combining systems engineering and design thinking

Abstract

For almost a year, the Design Studio and systems engineering teams at Dassault Systèmes have shared their respective practice: design thinking and complex systems engineering. This comparison gave us insights about several shifts: the people involved in project ecosystems, the call for more disruptive innovation, the growing capabilities of computers, the need to take into account the full complexity of humans and a few shared ambitions between both disciplines. After explaining this context, this paper reports on the comparison between the two practices, through a cross-referenced strength and weakness comparison, and other counterbalancing points. We also share early hypotheses, gleaned from our experiments, on how to combine the design thinking and systems engineering approaches in early stages of innovation, at the right time, despite cultural differences. To conclude, we look at what is needed to make complexity easier to grasp, how a combined approach also calls for a fresh look at project organisations and for a practice mixing art and technology.