Innovation is social. 1 is not social. This is not an individual thinking about design (and yes, MANY hold the wrong assumption about the principles), this is tapping the collective power of individuals – NOT to be confused with groupthink or other such terms, nor does this suggest there is not need for various depths of expertise. What it does suggest is that the breadth of context for any solution is so broad that no one individual can accommodate it alone.

Your last sentence is interesting, because it suggests a view that I think is not necessarily shared by all those who use the phrase “design thinking.” I can see that the idea of innovation-as-process, as opposed to innovation-as-outcome implies an organisational application of this approach to problem solving (and Roger Martin’s book takes a similar line). However, can individuals not make a difference by approaching their on work in this way, even if their organisation does not explicilty support it?

Tim’s most recent TED piece offers the best yet of his perspectives: http://andrewhargadon.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/10/ideo-on-ted-tim-brown-on-thinking-big-in-design.html. But you’re clearly missing the firehose of references to Design Thinking: http://delicious.com/iknovate/DesignThinking

My first alignment is always to the references from Roger Martin (his latest title currently hitting the market http://twurl.nl/6jlrgi). While it takes some context to understand, I find his Mystery…Binary Code model very useful to ‘check’ our perspectives (I’ve put the model in one context for this piece http://www.fastforwardblog.com/2009/09/16/e2-0-unleashing-the-potential/)

Design Thinking isn’t about how individuals think, it’s an appoach to collaborating in more designerly ways.