Design thinking driven creative economy to divert conventional SL’s economic policies

Bunch of sequential incidents commencing from Easter Sunday attack, Covid outbreak etc., drastically contributed and accelerated the economic crisis of Sri Lanka in 2022.  

However, the reasons for the Sri Lankan economic crisis cannot be confined to few years, as it has been implying via several economic and social indicators throughout the time after the trade liberalization in 1977. 

The recent efforts mainly focus on pushing the economy from the center gravity of the crisis for the short-term existence but not for the long-term survival. 

Creative economy as a concept, immensely addresses creativity factor, knowledge enhancement and innovation-driven scenario to enable economic growth with newfound developments to foster quality of living.  

United States, United Kingdom, Japan, China, India, South Korea, France, Italy, Canada, Germany, Bazil etc are some of the key players in the creative economy corridor in terms of innovations based on national comparative advantages. The validity of the creativity has been revealed in terms of global presence, number of intellectual property rights per million population, volume of the export income etc.  In a nutshell, the outcome of the creative economy is reflected in the quality of solutions for basic economic problems that are experiencing in developed territories. 

Nevertheless, design thinking is a vital effort for problem solving, embedded with innovative solutions to deliver highly valued outcome to the end users, with either removed or minimized pain points. Consequently, design thinking enables fostering economic growth with overall socio-economic development in the long run. 

Design thinking has been the essence of many economies across the globe to foresee economic prosperities. United States, Silicon Valley, Netherlands, China, Sweden, United Kingdom, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Finland etc. are few case studies to refer. 

Sri Lankan economy requires macro-level redesign of its existing habitual practices as well as economic and social attitudes for the so-called system change. The design thinking-based overhaul redesign is essential for most of the sectors to drive the system change.  

Hence, creating the transparency in procedures, avoiding possibilities for corruptions, ensuring systematic procedures and equity, increased efficiency, and perceived responsibility and accountability shall be core deliverables of design thinking in each sector. 

Accordingly, prioritization is required to commence. Gross Domestic Product and its composition deserve special attention as it is the fuel to run any economy. Correspondingly, agriculture, industry and service sector need design thinking applications to redesign. Education, health, government services, transportation, and trade etc are also in the line of redesigning.  Agriculture as an example, requires severe design thinking essence as there are many pain points.  Design thinking for the industrial sector might differ from the agricultural sector, but interdependency is mandatory.  Design thinking for the education sector in Sri Lanka could determine the literacy readiness of upcoming labor force towards ongoing industry 4.0 and upcoming industry 5.0 revolutions. The core requirements of transportation have to be redesigned addressing safety, punctuality, comfortability, availability and accessibility. 

The basis

Empathy is the basis for design thinking. Empathy refers to recognizing the perception of others by putting into their shoes. Hence, the empathy initiates the morale for design thinking to uplift standards of ongoing practices to reduce pain points. Reduced pain points signal for the quality and comfort. Unfortunately, most of the decision makers are unable to get into the shoes of users of most of the economic actions. The extreme privileges lengthen the demand for design thinking. Developed economies encourage decision makers also to design from the user’s point of view as design thinking ultimately should lead to optimized solutions for basic economic problems. 

The one who has never used public transportation might not be able to perfectly empathize from the user’s perspective for an effective and efficient design thinking. 

Sri Lanka has a list of challenges to overcome to ensure optimum solutions for its basic economic problems. Brain drains has numerically confirmed the significance of design thinking-based outcomes. The continuation of existing economic policies witnessed their degree of sustainability so far. Hence, economic policy reforms based on design thinking principles could help Sri Lanka to make its prosperity dream by 2048.  Creative economy with encouraged innovations, fertile investment atmosphere to attract foreign direct investments, tourism destinations with more value additions, diversified export basket, being a member of global value chains, corridor for skilled labour force with developed education and vocational aspects to serve global markets, etc require the touch of design thinking.  

Increased gross domestic product, higher per capita income, developed infrastructure, stabilized domestic price level, foreign exchange and interest rates, sufficient reserve base, and better standards of living would be key economic targets by 2048 for the developed version of Sri Lanka.  

The economic policies initiated today with the empathy from public point of view will be the crucial success factor for Sri Lanka to make the 2048 dream a reality. 

(The writer is a Senior Lecturer, Consultant, School of Business, National Institute of Business Management)