Design Thinking Reshapes EA For Dynamic Business

Recently, I interviewed a half dozen top service design agencies to better understand how they work with enterprise architects and business architects inside the client firms they serve. All of the agencies I interviewed focus on helping their clients transform customer experience and introduce new products and services. I wanted to interview these agencies because they represent the tip of the spear when it comes to introducing new innovation inside of companies looking to take advantage of disruptive drivers - both competitive and digital - and rethink their business models.

I asked each agency for examples of how they worked with their clients' enterprise architects and business architects when introducing new innovation. When I posed this question to each agency, I could hear crickets chirping in the background. In short, they all indicated - in as nice terms as possible - that they try to avoid the IT organization in general, and had no contact with specific enterprise architects or business architects.

For me these interviews painted a picture of a school yard where team captains are picking players for kickball, and a small group of kids were being left on the sidelines, not picked for the team. Using this analogy, the business - in many cases the CMO and CXO leaders - are the team captains. And enterprise architecture, including business architects and process architects, are the kids being left on the sidelines.