The TED India Conference that I attended in Mysore India last month was themed by the concept: The Future Beckons. It seems to me that the future is arriving at an exponential speed compared to its passing, and with it is the ever-pressing need to find solutions to marketing’s global challenges.

The idea of “design thinking” provided an underpinning for this year’s TED. On that note, the Director of the Stanford Design Program and the founder of the “Design for Change Lab”, Banny Banerjee had this to say:

“Design Thinking – the term used for the combination of the processes, skills, cognitive processes, and attitudes prevalent in design – is being used to infuse innovation into businesses; an even more significant phenomenon is that design thinking is being looked at as having genuine promise in addressing issues of sustainability.”

Banerjee’s ideas, like so many speakers at TED, got the design geek in me super-psyched to help spread the gospel of design thinking. And writing this post forced me to think about some examples that prove its relevance to our world of marketing. Thankfully there are many.

Here are three:

1. Progressive Insurance – Progressive Insurance implemented design thinking in the early 90s; the result was real time accident evaluation and customer care – an industry first. With operational innovation, Progressive could suddenly provide better service at lower costs than its competitors, according to a 2004 article by Michael Hammer in The Harvard Business Review. That move reflected a designer’s way of thinking about customer needs, but the company was able to execute the idea through its ability to measure, analyze and improve its processes.

2. Pact Underwear – Launched earlier this year, PACT and futurist Yves Behar are refashioning how people perceive apparel in the 21st century by focusing every aspect of their product through a socially conscious lens. They started with the integration of a social aspect into the design itself. As part of the brand’s essence, PACT is commiting to partnerships with nonprofit organizations that work to create social and environmental change. Each underwear collection is aligned with a nonprofit. Internationally recognized artists and designers create graphic visualizations of each organization’s mission with underwear as their canvas. PACT then gives 10% of each sale to support these organizations. That ladders back to a positioning that’s embodied in their motto: “Change Starts With Your Underwear.”

3. Apple – And, of course, there’s the iPhone. Simply put, the now-iconic commercials that bring to light the tactile functionality and intuitive nature of the device are a succinct reflection of what Mr. Jobs presented to the brand’s legions of followers via the keynote unveiling of the iPhone.

If Banerjee’s (or my) opinions about the power and potential of design thinking have piqued your interest, you might be interested in Toronto’s Roger Martin, the Dean of U of T’s Rotman School, and his concept of “Integrative Thinking”.

Torontonians who want to learn more about Design Thinking and Integrative Thinking, should check out the “Integrative Thinking Experts Speaker Series” at Rotman. Next Event is December 3, 2009.