Three academically focused collections of research studies are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all of the research on design thinking in professional journals such as Harvard Business Review, Design Studies, Journal of Business Strategy, Academy of Management Learning and Education, Design Management Review, Journal of Management Studies, Design and Culture, Design Research Quarterly, Review of Educational Research, and MIT Sloan Management Review.
The collection Design Thinking: Understand-Improve-Apply includes topics such as the efficacy of prototyping, innovation and culture, business process modeling, and agile software development.
Another edited book, Design Thinking Research: Making Design Thinking Functional, looks at tools to increase team interaction, research on creativity and confidence, measuring the impact of design thinking, and documenting the transfer of design thinking. It takes research from Stanford University and the Hasso Planter Institute in Germany governing various creativity experiments to solve wicked problems that can have applications for designers, engineers, and managers.