Academic libraries have moved swiftly to grasp the challenges and opportunities of the new Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. The body of academic and practice-based literature is growing fast, showing how libraries are exploring their role in Information Literacy (IL) and AI, ethics and AI, and how they vigorously test and adopt various AI-powered tools for their services. Across these accounts, librarians express concern about their competence, skills and knowledge of the new technology and its implications for the research community. In this article, we present a holistic process model called the B-Wheel that addresses the phenomenon's complexity with approaches adopted from design thinking ideologies. We propose design approaches as an alternative strategy for academic libraries that want to avoid partial optimisation of AI skills and to ensure more generative competency building in their organisation. We drew inspiration for the B-Wheel model from the principles and pedagogy of the 20th-century Bauhaus art and design school in Germany. The article focuses on the model's features and its elements, constructed through workshops in Scandinavian research libraries. We also present experiences from the first use case in a University Library in Scandinavia. We propose that the main principles of the B-Wheel process model – a holistic design approach and learning by doing – are transferable across and beyond academic libraries.