Design thinking as a disruptive discourse. Embracing conflict as a creative factor

The design discipline is nowadays extending its boundaries, becoming more than a profession, a way of thinking and a problem solving approach. This process implies bringing together multiple models of reasoning, modalities of practice and divergent perspectives. A large amount of literature has been dedicated to the adoption of design thinking in other disciplines, and to its successfully application in business practices. However, less attention has been put on the contrasts and frictions provoked by the designer system of thinking. Before understanding and accepting an approach specific to the design profession, as a valid and reliable working principle, the confrontation between the different actors in a multidisciplinary team has to pass through a conflictual phase. Taking into consideration a series of experiences that involve multidisciplinary teams, the next paper concentrates on the conflict as a powerful and essential step in the creative process. In this sense the conflict management will be presented in terms of understanding the root of the contrasts, proposing that rather than leveling the differences, through mitigation, the conflictual, moment has to be exploited as an important step in the working process. The main question asked in the paper is: what if design could be used as a provoking factor, in order to create entropy and induce, more creative problem solving approaches? The paper will unfold in several parts: first the design thinking approach will be explained. The second part will stress out the increasing ethnic and disciplinary diversity of the workgroups and the benefits of the differences. In the third part the critical moments in the project management flow will be underlined. The discussion will show different methods to channel conflict towards a creative change in the reasoning system introducing design as a creative element. We will conclude by proposing a different way of looking at the design thinking, emphasizing its potential as a disruptive discourse in the context of multidisciplinary working teams.