Design thinking as a development tool in SMEs in Ecuador: a systematic review

All businesses are born with the ideas of visionaries who seek to make their dreams come true, whether through the development of new technologies, the reworking of existing ones, or simply positional strengthening. Currently, SMEs have deficiencies in the creative area to solve their problems, which prevents them from facing the various challenges of the market, therefore it is essential to find an alternative that solves this problem. In this way, the objective of the research is to analyze the importance of using the Design Thinking tool to solve problems in SMEs. For this, the qualitative methodology was used with the Systematic Review method, compiled in Scopus, during the years 2018-2022, finding 164 articles, to which the inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied, to finally examine 13 investigations, of which from which it is concluded that the DT is an adequate and efficient instrument to solve technical difficulties, since it synthesizes the entire creative process, and provides a diversity of ways to find solutions, in addition to predicting possible errors in the short, medium and long term; however, the success of the company does not depend on a tool, but is anchored to macro and microeconomic factors.