Design Thinking and the New Spirit of Capitalism

An ethnographic study on Design Thinking, this book offers profound insights into the popular innovation method, centrally exploring how design thinking's practice relates to the vast promises surrounding it. Through a close study of a Berlin-based innovation agency, Tim Seitz finds both mundane knowledge practices and promises of transformation. He unpacks the relationships between these discourses and practices and undertakes an exploratory movement that leads him from practice theory to pragmatism. In the course of this movement, Seitz makes design thinking understandable as a phenomenon of what Boltanski and Chiapello described as the new spirit of capitalismthat is, an ideological structure that incorporates criticism and therefore strengthens capitalism.

Applies sociological rigor to a work methodology common in entrepreneurial innovation culture Bridges ethnography, empirical data, practice, and theory to provide critical insight into Design Thinking Valuable not only academics in ethnography, sociology, STS, and beyond, but also for practitioners of Design Thinking (consultants, creative, designers, and coaches)

Autorentext

Tim Seitz is a doctoral researcher in the DFG research training group "Innovation Society Today" at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany. His research interests include sociological theory, science and technology studies and ethnographic methods.

Inhalt

Chapter 1: Introduction: Design Thinking and the New Spirit of Capitalism.- Chapter 2: The Temporality of Design Thinking.- Chapter 3: the Materiality of Design Thinking.- Chapter 4: Design Thinking and the New Spirit of Capitalism.- Conclusion.