Enterprise Design Thinking
IBM 2017-2018
The mission: Scale the practice of design and design thinking across IBM and beyond.
The problem: If changing the way a single team works isn’t easy, then changing the way 300,000 IBMers work seems like a fool’s errand. But IBM’s Enterprise Design Thinking team was up for the task. Over the course of five years, we had upskilled thousands of designers in IBM’s own unique flavor of design thinking, but we knew that we needed to do more. In order to truly transform into a design-lead organization, we needed to make sure developers, sellers, and marketers were practicing this approach. In short: we needed to scale.
The solution: In 2017, we launched the Enterprise Design Thinking learning platform, an online platform that guides users through various stages of design thinking (Practitioner, Co-Creator, Coach, and Leader) through a series of virtual courses and a toolkit of activities. The platform consists of short interactive lessons, videos, and resources.
The outcome: In just under 6 months, over 100,000 IBM employees had gone through the course to receive their Practitioner badge. Due to the success of the platform, we launched Enterprise Design Thinking externally and made the Practitioner course free to anybody.
The content: I was part of the Enterprise Design Thinking team for two years. During that time, I was the lead content strategist. Since this team functioned liked a startup I was responsible for anything and everything content related.
Content management: I worked closely with our design and development team to create and manage the content within the platform.
Storytelling: I managed a team of writers and video producers to develop video content and long-form video content and case studies for the platform and our various marketing efforts.
Sales enablement: Leading up to our external release at Think 2018, I helped manage all of our sales enablement and training, including messaging, decks, and various resources.
Marketing: I worked with our external partners and existing users to drive traffic to the platform.
