A spiritual corporate awakening: Transcending beyond traditional corporate philanthropy with design thinking

This chapter explores the spiritual corporate awakening that is taking place at the intersection of design thinking and international development. The content is relevant to designers, development practitioners, donors and any other actors involved in the design of new futures for marginalized populations in developing country contexts. Consolidating an in-depth literature review with applied field experience, we explore how greater social accountability and participatory development is achieved through new partnership models between design thinking firms and more traditional international development organizations. Theory is demonstrated alongside real-life examples and vignettes written from a practitioner's insights. The narrative of experiences from Ghana, Kenya and Tanzania present reflectionswhich were documented over a period of 18 months. These are comprised of readings, combined with observations and conversations with people working in design thinking and international development in these countries. These insights were gathered through manual analysis of the applied case studies and provide a frame for future research in this emerging area.