Business Thinking for Designers

• What is happening? This first element frames an objective 
or problem that needs to be addressed. It’s important to 
start your story here in order to quickly confirm to others 
that you understand what the key objective or problem is. 
Typically, this is something all stakeholders are already 

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Communicate the options
aware of. If you see heads nodding when you talk about 
what is happening, that’s a good thing.
• Why is it happening? After summarizing what is 
happening, it’s vital to review the root causes and impact 
to customers and the company if the main objective or 
problem isn’t addressed. It’s in this portion of the pyramid 
where the majority of data, insights, and conclusions will 
be placed to support your argument. 
• How are we going to fix it? This final section of the 
pyramid explains how the objective or problem will be 
addressed moving forward.
Now that you understand the basic structure of the pyramid, I’d 
like to share an example of an applied version of the structure. 
In practice, a commonly used version of Pyramid Principle 
is the Situation-Complication-Resolution (SCR) Framework. 
While there are other examples, this is a good starting point.