Using design thinking to improve strategic decisions during collaborative sensemaking

Human cognitive limitations affect strategic decision-making. One of such effects is emergence of cognitive biases, deviations from rationality in judgment. These biases can negatively influence an organisation's capability to capture and utilize new ideas, thus inhibiting innovation. Researchers have documented different strategies for mitigating cognitive biases – and many of them overlap with the ones emphasised in design thinking. However, research so far does not offer any specific “recipes” for mitigation of cognitive biases. This paper links together research on challenges of strategic decision-making, cognitive biases and design thinking. The paper investigates the effects of applying design-thinking tool in collaborative sense-making stage, within a small business team, aiming to mitigate confirmation bias. The study indicated that newly introduced design-thinking tools did not have the expected positive influence on decision-making. The research contributes to the field by developing a new framework on how to identify and mitigate confirmation bias in strategic decision-making.