Should we stop Calling It Design?
How SMEs Can Solve Problems Faster and Smarter
If I asked whether your business struggles to frame problems clearly, generate ideas quickly or test solutions without burning cash, you’d probably say yes. If I told you that design could help with all three, well then you might roll your eyes. And that’s a problem.
For too long, design has been both over-sold and under-appreciated. The rise of design thinking was a genuine step forward because it gave teams a structured approach with a language and a set of tools to pause, ask better questions and explore before leaping to solutions.
However, outside certain business circles, design thinking remains poorly understood. Many leaders view it as something requiring formal certification, rather than a set of practical habits anyone can adopt. Others treat it as merely a flashy exercise for corporate retreats, without embedding the techniques and mindset into everyday work.
And of course, it isn’t the only route to creative problem-solving. Approaches like the Osborn-Parnes CPS (Creative Problem Solving) framework have been around for decades and share the same spirit: curiosity, deliberate exploration, then focused action. What matters isn’t the label but the disciplined mindset behind it.
The Language Gap
Picture a founder standing at a whiteboard full of urgent to-dos: hire a business-development lead, fix the funnel, re-engage the team, cut costs. What’s missing is the one thing that would make half of those tasks easier — a way to understand and frame the realproblems before jumping to fixes.
Perhaps the word design itself doesn't help. Most business leaders facing challenges aren't thinking "I need design" but rather "How are we going to solve this problem?" When they think of design maybe they still picture logos, packaging or perhaps UX screens. For SMEs it often sounds like a “nice-to-have when there’s budget left over” — or something AI will soon do for free.
In one of my recent roles I joined a tech-infrastructure company as design strategy lead. I chose the title to avoid being pigeon-holed as a slide-deck or website guy. Which is, inevitably what I ended up working on for many months when I joined. But in a delivery-driven engineering culture, the default view of design was still front-end polish. I introduced “How Might We” questions, journey maps and the double-diamond — people used the language but didn’t necessarily see me as a problem-solver.
In hindsight I realised that tools alone don’t shift mindsets. Eventually I focused on how people worked together - creating a small team of collaboration coaches to build practical skills for individuals. That experience taught me something simple: design is contextual and agnostic to the problem. What matters is the stance behind it — curiosity to keep asking why, and optimism that a better way is always possible.
Reframing the Need
The issues that keep SME leaders awake — sluggish decisions, wasted spend, initiatives that never quite land, how to retain staff — are already design problems, but they just don’t get called that. UK research shows most SMEs expect a significant skills gap in the next few years, yet few list “design” or “innovation” near the top.
When you ask whether they’d like to frame problems better, test ideas faster or reduce the risks of a new product, the answer is always yes. They just don’t think of those as design capabilities, and I think that’s the gap we have to close.
Design as De-Risking
Design often gets talked about as the spark of creativity - the new idea or the elegant interface. But its quiet power is in risk-reduction. A simple rule of thumb from product development: fixing a requirement late, after code is written or a service is launched, can cost up to a hundred times more than catching it early.
Most of those late-stage fixes aren’t engineering problems — they’re design problems: framing the wrong question, misunderstanding the user, never testing assumptions.
The same is true in other areas.
Cyber-security breaches that hit almost half of UK SMEs often come down to poorly designed processes and human behaviour, not software alone.
McKinsey’s research showed that design-led companies outperformed the S&P 500 by more than 200 per cent over a decade — not because they hired more creatives, but because they learned faster where to place their bets.
For any SME investing in R&D or adopting new tech, design isn’t a luxury. It’s an important financial safeguard.
A Live Example: The Green Transition
For many founders, sustainability can feel like a distant or abstract agenda compared with the daily grind.
Yet it’s also a vivid example of why design matters. Meeting the challenges of the climate crisis isn’t just about new tech or regulations — it’s about how we design products, services and choices so that low-carbon options become practical and attractive.
That’s the same problem-solving discipline that helps a team fix a clunky process or launch a better service.
Belfast’s Big Motive showed this in their work on flood-preparedness. Using the classic three lenses of design thinking — desirability, feasibility, viability — they found what homeowners really needed (clear, accessible help), what was technically feasible (linking existing services through a digital platform) and what created long-term value (lower insurance claims, carbon savings, a scalable business model).
Treating the green transition as a design challenge shows what’s possible: it connects technical change with human behaviour and turns abstract goals into workable plans. But it’s also just one instance of the broader need for SMEs to build design-led problem-solving into everything they do.
Starting Simple
None of this means you need to hire a big consultancy. There are a few accessible, low-risk practices that help you focus on the right problems and learn fast. These practices can be supported (not replaced!) by AI tools, allowing you to enhance your cognitive abilities rather than substitute them.
Frame the problem before jumping to fixes.
A short, structured session using techniques such as “How Might We…” questions or a simple problem tree often reveals that the issue you thought you were solving isn’t the real one.
AI tools can give you a head-start here by summarising existing notes or clustering customer pain-points, so the group spends its time refining rather than staring at a blank wall. Use a visual collaboration tool like Miro for remote or distributed teams, and to enhance the in-person experience.
Talk to real customers early.
A handful of well-chosen conversations can save weeks of internal debate. AI can help by drafting an interview guide or spotting patterns in notes and transcripts, but the human conversation is still what brings the insight.
Make the invisible visible.
Even a quick journey map or rough systems sketch can help teams see connections and decide where to intervene.
Digital whiteboards with light touch AI-assist can help tidy up and cluster what the team captures, so you can focus on the discussion.
Prototype small and fast.
The aim is to learn, not to launch. Sometimes that’s a paper mock-up or a storyboard; sometimes it’s a quick AI-generated screen or flow to spark discussion.
Run short, focused workshops or sprints.
A well-framed half-day session often moves a sticky challenge on further than weeks of slide-decks and energy-sapping meetings. And to accelerate things further, AI can act as a handy co-facilitator — capturing notes or summarising ideas — but the human guidance, energy and decision-making still matter most.
These aren’t exotic techniques that only designers and ‘creative types’ can do. They’re structured ways to slow down just enough to look at the problem differently, then move faster because you’re solving the right thing.
The Case for Creative Capability
The call to stop calling it design isn’t about throwing the word away — it’s about clearing away the baggage that makes leaders think it’s cosmetic. At heart, design is simply a disciplined, and very human, way to solve the right problem at the right time.
If more SME leaders recognised that, they’d begin to see it not as a specialist service but as a capability every business needs: a way to make better choices, avoid waste and create the conditions for genuine innovation — whatever name you give it.
That shift matters far beyond individual firms. SMEs make up the vast majority of the UK’s business landscape; their ability to adapt, experiment and solve real problems is what shapes our future economy. Imagine the momentum if thousands of these businesses approached growth, sustainability and technology adoption with the same curiosity and disciplined problem-solving that the best innovators use today.
Helping more of them build that capability isn’t a niche design concern but one of the most hopeful, practical levers we have for stronger businesses and a more resilient economy.
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