Fostering business innovation through design with a human approach

China’s food industry has faced a crisis in consumer confidence in the past few years, rocked by food scandals involving recycled oil, fake eggs and mislabelled meat. Yet where many saw a widespread problem, the brother and sister team of Harn and Anmao Sun saw an opportunity. The result was restaurant and grocery chain Hunter Gatherer.

Founded in October 2014, the Shanghai-based business provides customers with trustworthy dining and grocery options. More than half of the vegetables on its menu are from the business’s two chemical-free farms, with the rest coming from a closely vetted farming network.

What makes the business stand out is not just how the company leverages consumer sentiment, however, but the cohesive problem-solving developed around it that addresses supply chain management, retail and interior design, and brand positioning and marketing.

This was no fluke. At its inception, Hunter Gatherer collaborated with Ideo, a company with offices around the world that specialises in a process called design thinking. According to one of its three co-founders David Kelley, the practice is “a human-centred 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”.

Such methods are powerful, he says, because design is used not as a cosmetic tool but as a vital pillar with technology to create innovative solutions. It is a specific process and way of thinking that Ideo’s chief executive, Tim Brown, has been advocating since taking the helm in 2000. In Hong Kong recently, Brown stressed the need for creative competitiveness if businesses are to thrive, and why a new kind of leadership is needed in the global arena – one that could unlock a team’s creativity and ability to innovate.