ABSTRACT
Service design has been a growing trend in the last decade. It serves as a practical and concrete approach towards more customer- and user-centric ways to develop products and services. This chapter discusses what an empathic organization means and how an organization should evolve to be able to use service design as an empathic development approach. It refers to service design as an empathic practice and development methodology that enables one to design with the customer, internal stakeholders and external stakeholders. The chapter brings forward knowing organizations and learning organizations. Knowing organizations place high emphasis on consistent, replicable and standardised practices. Design maturity is a common term that has been in use since the Danish Design Centre developed the Design Ladder model in 2001.
