The Design Thinking Ghana Hub, the Ghana Design Network, and the Ashesi Design Laboratory, is organising a two-day conference to help in finding creative ways of developing new products and business models.

The upcoming Design Thinking Ghana Conference (DTGC), on June 22 and 23 would focus on how to gather deep customer or user and market insights, how to unpack them, explore practices for developing solutions and explore the tools for conceptualising and testing solutions.

A press release copied to the Ghana News Agency indicated that, participants would be exposed to how these processes work in exploring opportunities for social innovation in pressing socioeconomic environments, how to engage stakeholders, collaborate for social impact and how to sustain the impact once established.

Dr. Gordon Adomdza, Founding Lead at Ashesi Design Lab and Co-Founder of Design Thinking Ghana Hub noted that the DTGC 2018 has two tracks; that is Using Design Thinking for competitive Advantage and Social Impact.

He said “we believe that if a company has deep customer or user insights, it can understand the customers’ needs better than its competitors and subsequently provide the best solution. Also, if customers enjoy the best solution, their level of satisfaction will sustain the company’s business and also ensure the greatest impact.”

Dr. Adomdza said there was a reason why design thinking is gaining grounds, adding that, with deep customer insight, companies are sometimes able to create value beyond what their competitors offer and make significant impact.

He said there were many ways of unearthing deep customer insights, but the Design Thinking approach provided deeper information for decision making because it focused on the user and takes a systems perspective in tackling the issue at hand.

The DTGC 2017 engaged 120 Ghanaians and 30 expatriates with presentations, mini-workshops, and great networking activities with the audience made up of professionals and students.

This year’s DTGC 2018 with the two-day event will feature a series of exciting and educational activities.