How much growth is too much growth?

Context

As part of an assignment in the MS Strategic Design & Management program at Parsons School of Design, our faculty Seth Johnson from IBM tasked us with choosing a case study from IDEO’s website and analyzing it. 

Project

Original Case Study

For more context, have a look at the original case study on IDEO’s website.

IDEO x Zalando, a case study analysis

Zalando, Europe’s largest online fashion retail platform, had seen great success since
its inception in 2008 and was one of the fastest-growing tech companies in Europe.¹ In
2014, Zalando’s CEO Robert Gentz brought in IDEO to strategize for their future. As
they faced increasing competition and fear of stagnation, Gentz felt that building design
thinking capabilities across the company would allow Zalando to make systemic
business shifts. With the help of IDEO, he wanted to build better experiences with
customers and balance operational excellence and execution with innovation. In short,
IDEO was tasked with helping Zalando grow and innovate as a business.

We believe that the challenge IDEO was tasked with is situated in a larger wicked
problem as Zalando is a tech company in the business of fashion. The fashion industry
and more importantly, fast fashion, is right in the midst of several wicked problems such
as lack of sustainability, wastage of resources such as water, improper waste
management, air & water pollution, poor work conditions & exploitation of labor, and the
problem of overconsumption.

IDEO assisted Zalando in opening an internal innovation lab called ‘The Studio’ to develop
new digital products, services, and experiences. In the following description, we
identified some design thinking approaches marked in bold. One of IDEO’s first tasks
was to resurface the company’s purpose. IDEO predictably performed a series of
interviews and workshops (research) and uncovered a unifying intent: “Zalando
exists to reimagine fashion, for the good of all”, which then became their mission
statement. To launch this new ideology, they organized a 5-day “Festival of Purpose”,
where they shared a plan that the whole company could rally around. IDEO helped
Zalando prototype and iterate new digital products, which also enabled
cross-disciplinary teams to work jointly with agility. We feel there are certain aspects
of this case study that can be used to support a design thinking approach, such as
including all stakeholders to form a mission statement, using agile teams to quickly
prototype and launch products. However, the case study also mentions how “IDEOers
helped them (Zalando employees) master the design thinking process so they could
lead future projects ”. This left us thinking, is it really that simple to “master” the design
thinking process?

IDEO was brought in for a specific task that was predetermined by Robert Gentz: the
creation of a team that would reinvent the way they work through innovation and design
processes in order to continue growing as a business, while also future-proofing their
company. And IDEO did just that.

Our strategic design approach would be to first question the premise. Take a look at the
gigantic title on IDEO’s case study page: “Driving Growth at Europe’s Largest Online
Retailer”. It is already the largest by a country mile (more than €1 out of every €100
spent on clothing in Europe is spent at Zalando²) and yet they want to use design
thinking to further the gap at the top. Even the phrasing of the subtitle is bizarrely
capitalistic: ‘How Zalando redesigned the way it works and saw profits soar’. It reeks of
corporate greed from a company trying to monopolize the market. Several of Tania
Anaissie’s critiques of design thinking can be identified here: “it exacerbates power
asymmetries … ignores the complexity of systems … it was shaped to increase
consumption and profit in the corporate world.”³

Furthermore, Zalando has been involved in a slew of controversies such as
manipulating foreign capital and cheap labour⁴, appalling conditions for workers in
Zalando’s partner companies⁵, invasion of employee privacy⁶, unfair competitive
practices⁷, and greenwashing⁸. Perhaps the most problematic is fast fashion’s ability to
encourage overconsumption⁹, which has enormously negative consequences for the
planet. Is it possible to simply work with Zalando while ignoring all of this? “All design
has social impact.”¹⁰

Our approach would be to take a step back and first outline the “Dark Matter”¹¹ that is
inseparable from the industry and organization. The contextual framing of the question
is vital, and we feel IDEO should have reframed Zalando’s question. “It doesn’t matter
how great the solutions are if they are answering the wrong questions.”¹² When
designing for such a company, we would first try to sustainably grow the company and
its practices while also working with their partner company’s employees to ensure
humane practices are being followed. “Focus on human problems rather than on
technical solutions”¹³