Gartner Says Hybrid Thinking for Enterprise Architecture Can Help Organisations Embrace Transformation, Innovation and Strategy

Gartner Analysts Introduce Hybrid Thinking and its Attributes at Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit 2010, 17-18 May in London

Egham, UK - Most enterprise architecture (EA) initiatives remain trapped in the IT department, and a new approach – hybrid thinking – is required to break EA out and into the wider organisation, according to Gartner, Inc. Adopting hybrid thinking is an excellent way to meld design thinking, IT thinking and business thinking, and achieve transformative, innovative and strategic changes.

“Leading organisations that are driving change during times of rapid upheaval are showing the ability to combine new techniques for thinking critically, creatively and innovatively about complex problems with more traditional, engineering-based analytical methods,” said Nicholas Gall, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “We are seeing several leading companies combining design thinking and other thinking methods, including more traditional approaches, to drive transformative, innovative and strategic change.”

Hybrid thinking combines the analytical mastery of architects with the intuitive originality of designers. Hybrid thinking drives change via the co-creative exploration of meaningful human-centred experiences when confronting complex, intractable issues, also known as “wicked problems.”

Exploiting the attributes of hybrid thinking in EA can help enterprise architects drive change. For example, this can be done by directly involving users in testing and prototyping ideas early to get immediate feedback, challenging a product or service’s perceived value from the perspective of those who must use it, or architecting the enterprise from the “outside-in.” Gartner predicts that, by 2013, more than 20 per cent of organisations will explicitly design their businesses from the outside in – up from less than 5 per cent in 2009.

“By integrating design thinking, which is already very popular in business circles but is virtually unknown in IT circles, enterprise architects can focus on the right tempo of operations, enabling them to centre their outcomes on influencing people, rather than systems. It applies richer ethnographic methods for developing closer connections with all departments in the organisation and foster harmonisation and collaboration,” said Mr Gall. “The focus is on designing an ecosystem where variations abound, rather than an organisation, which is often monolithic.”

Among early adopters of hybrid thinking are Proctor & Gamble (P&G) and Kaiser Permanente. P&G’s CIO reorganised teams to work on a project-by-project basis rather than on a permanent basis. It transformed the IT organisation into a “flow to work” design shop focusing on the most meaningful work. This flow-to-work approach helped P&G to integrate Gillette in just 15 months. Another example includes Kaiser Permanente. It redesigned shift changes for nurses and the result was higher-quality knowledge transfer and reduced prep-time, permitting earlier and better-informed contact with patients.

“The outcome of a hybrid thinking approach is a meaningful business strategy that is both technologically feasible and economically sustainable,” said Mr Gall. “Applying hybrid thinking to EA initiatives will help refocus on the central issue – ensuring that outcomes are human centred, and are meaningful to those who create and use them.”

Mr Gall will be speaking at the Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit 2010 which takes place 17-18 May in London. For many organisations, traditional approaches to EA are no longer relevant. The Summit will cover new dimensions of EA, from up-to-the minute advances in hybrid thinking and Pattern-Based Strategy™ to architecting the connected organisation from the outside in. For further information about the conference please visit www.europe.gartner.com/ea. Additional information from the event will be shared on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Gartner_incand at http://twitter.com/Gartner_incusing #GartnerEA.

Gartner’s latest video on design thinking is available on the Gartner YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/Gartnervideo#p/u/2/UXsu8ndUkjg. The slide on “The Eight Principles of Hybrid Thinking “is available on Slideshare at http://bit.ly/aAiIrZ

About Gartner:
Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company. Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors, Gartner is the indispensable partner to 60,000 clients in 10,000 distinct organizations. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A., and has 4,000 associates, including 1,200 research analysts and consultants in 80 countries. For more information, visit www.gartner.com.