Exploring Design Thinking as a Strategy for Business Process Analysis in Higher Education Institutions

Business processes play a fundamental role in the Digital Transformation of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). However, activities, such as the sharing of process understanding, problem identification, and solution design, become challenging in institutions that demand negotiation and generation of ideas among participants with different profiles. In this sense, Design Thinking is presented as a tool to support innovation and exchange ideas for the diverse stages of process modelling. Nevertheless, few studies have explored the use of Design Thinking as a support for the collaborative analysis of business processes [1]. This research presents a case study where a comparison of business process analysis and mapping activities before and after the implementation of Design Thinking was performed on the Digital Transformation project of the Politécnica Salesiana University (UPS, by its acronym in Spanish) in Ecuador. The results show that the use of Design Thinking reduces the time required for business process mapping and speeds up decision-making by providing support for negotiation activities.