From Acquaintances to Partners in Innovation: An Analysis of 20 Years of Design Thinking's Contribution to New Product Development

Scholars have suggested that design thinking (DT) should form an integral part of the new product development (NPD) process. However, the contribution of DT to NPD over the past years is yet to be synthesized. In this article, we develop a conceptual framework categorizing how DT contributes to NPD, and present a map to visualize how research in the area of DT in NPD has evolved over the past 20 years. A systematic analysis of 89 journal papers published between 2000 and 2020 helped to generate a conceptual framework, which provides a typology for discussing the growing state of the art of DT in NPD. The study enhances the academic debate by providing a holistic perspective on how DT contributes to the NPD ecosystem and offers directions for future research for the next 20 years.