Engineering for a future state

From the current issue of Rotman (Leadership Forum: The View from the C-Suite) - interview with David Labistour, former CEO of Mountain Equipment Co-op:

"To me, Design Thinking is about defining a future state for our customer and the desired outcome of the future state - what our customers will need, and what the effect will be on them, and then applying the appropriate solutions to meeting the challenge.  I confess that I have a bit of difficulty separating design from systems thinking, which is also about defining what is changing in a market or business and getting to that future state.  To me, the two are sort of "joined at the hip", and starting to morph into one.  Both are very future-focused and customer-focused and attempt to understand the complexity of what we do, as opposed to taking a very linear approach to strategy and solutions."