Design -Driven Growth:: 
The Resurgence of
Procter and Gamble 

After P&G’s new CEO Alan George “A.G.” Lafley arrived, he commenced the remarkable turnaround.  He downsized underperforming sections of the employee workforce and shed numerous non-performing brands. But despite being able to create an environment of efficiency and discipline, Lafley was still unable to fix the problem of product stagnation. Lafley realised that merely laying off employees was not enough to rejuvenate P&G. It hit him that maybe this mammoth company needed “Design Thinking” to pave the way for its future. To implement this strategy, he appointed Claudia Kotchka as the first Design Chief of P&G.

According to Tim Brown, Executive Chair of IDEO, a global design and innovation company, “Design Thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” Its steps are simple: understand the problem thoroughly, explore an extensive variety of solutions, recapitulate using prototyping and testing, and finally, implement the best solution identified during the prototyping phase. However, this process is not always linear. Rather than considering them as steps to achieve the perfect solution, they must instead be viewed as multiple modes contributing to a plan. These primary stages are the regular stages expected to be carried out in any design project.