Design thinking is based on designers’ creative ways of working and is defined as a formal method for creative problem solving aimed at fostering innovation by harnessing “the designer's sensibility and methods.” The basic premise is that design “thinking” can be extracted and separated from the situated practice of designing in the studio. This approach has given rise to a widely accepted nomenclature for describing design which has improved communication between designers and managers, leading to massive interest in adoption of design thinking in management settings. However, due to a widespread implicit cognitivism in the literature, scholars find it difficult to explain the cultural and experiential qualities of design thinking and it tends to be presented as a fundamentally cognitive, problem‐solving activity. We argue that these cognitivist tendencies preclude proper attention to and theorization of designers’ creative practice. We contend that the absence of a theory of practice prevents a deeper understanding of the contribution of design thinking to innovation, loses sight of the sensibility on which it relies, and hampers realization of the promise of design thinking. We develop an alternative theoretical perspective, grounded in a pragmatist theory of practice and the studio culture from which designers’ creative practice developed. This theoretical perspective allows design thinking to be understood as sensemaking, foregrounds imagination and improvisation as its core activities, and explains how sensibility is developed and nurtured. We review the design thinking literature through this pragmatist lens and discuss the implications for theory and practice of conceptualizing design thinking as sensemaking.

The international circulation of urban design concepts often leads to their characterization as transferable ideals defined by a set of universalized 'best practices' that are simply implemented in new localities, as is typical of top-down approaches to planning. Recently, the compact city and New Urbanism have become trendy concepts informing the development of urban projects across geographies. This research draws on ANT sensitivities and policy mobilities studies to examine the regeneration of Copenhagen's Southern Harbour (Sydhavn) wherein the compact city and New Urbanism ideals, together with a declared inspiration from Dutch architecture, were originally incorporated in the masterplan. Through the analysis of documents and semi-structured interviews, the paper illustrates how these idealsmerged as 'New Compactism'were mobilized and re-intepreted by local actors in Sydhavn. It thus adds to our understanding of how the circulation of such ideals is not a matter of implementation, but a complex social process of translation that entails struggle and transformation.

This paper critically reflects on the concept of design strategy as deployed in design management literature. It starts by describing current discourses in the wider field of strategy research and then discusses how, by conforming to orthodox theories in strategic management, design management literature has tended to overlook alternative streams of strategy research. In many instances, studies in design strategy adopt taken-for-granted assumptions from rational planning approaches, and analyses of firm performance tend to take precedence over actors and their actions. Thus, it highlights the need for new lines of inquiry grounded in practice, letting go of the economic rationality and theoretical abstractions that have permeated mainstream strategy research. Hence, for future studies, it suggests a post-rational, practice-based perspective to advance our understanding of strategy as it relates to design management.

This article draws on an ethnographic investigation of product development at an engineering organization to examine the struggle faced by designers in justifying design proposals when cooperating with engineers and managers. Frustrated by the priority given to numbers over other modes of evaluation traditionally used in design, designers in this case developed and mobilized their own evaluation device to quantitatively prove the validity and worth of their work. This quasi-parodic form of evaluation enables designers to criticize and influence strategic project decisions. At the same time, this cynical act of resistance paradoxically endorses the quantitative approach and undermines designers’ own professional expertise as a valid way of conceiving worth, which ultimately renders this move more indeterminate than what a distinction between resistance and conformity denotes. Overall, the study adds to our understanding of how modes and principles of justification typically embraced by professional groups can be unsettled by attempts to protect them. In doing so, it brings to light the ambivalent nature of resistance through a cynical embrace of quantification.