How Does Design Thinking Impact the Market Success of Digital Products?

Through a survey of 247 digital product development leaders, we explore how design thinking principles incorporated into product development routines influence successful market outcomes. We find that product utility partially mediates the relationship between design thinking principles and market success, and that this mediated relationship is stronger when the product team is confronted with an unfamiliar design problem. Surprisingly, and in contrast, product novelty does not mediate the relationship between design thinking principles and market success. Instead, product novelty has a non-linear (inverted U) relationship with market success, but design thinking flattens this curve and thus improves the likelihood that product novelty may lead to market success. Our findings, to an extent, explain the mixed results reported by prior studies examining the effects of design thinking on product and market outcomes.