Mark McDonald

When you think of a book about design, you tend to think that it is more about art and form rather than function and process.  This book presents a new way of management thinking and problem solving centered on human interaction, innovation, information and insight.  Change by Design by Tim Brown the CEO of IDEO is anything but simply one of the best books I have read in the past year.

Highly recommended for executives and anyone looking to understand a fresh approach to innovation, user generated content, brainstorming and problem solving.  There are many books about what innovation is, this is one of the few books that discusses how to go from need to solution.

It is rare that an accomplished executives shares how they think in a way that is readily understandable and that you can take up and apply yourself.  This book provides the tools to inject design thinking into your thinking but only if you have an open mind and are willing to see the limitations of current techniques and approaches.

Brown’s central argument is that we need new ways of thinking and approaches to the problems we face as individuals, companies and society.  Rather than relying on technology alone to address these problems, Brown concentrates on what he calls a third way of thinking – Design Thinking.

Design thinking is a non-linear approach to problem solving that integrates what is desirable from a human point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically viable by seeing a patterns in the environment and taking a human centered approach to engage people and address problems.

The book is a discussion of the design thinking philosophy rather than a prescription – which is good as it allows you to see how you would apply this way of thinking to your situation.

The book is divided into two parts.  The first part of the book discuses the how aspects of design thinking.  These chapters concentrate on the approaches, tools and techniques used to create comprehensive, human centered, economically viable innovation and solutions.  These chapters also present these tools in the context of changes in society, technology, commerce and the environment so you can see how design thinking works.

The second part of the book discusses how design thinking applies to corporations, society, the need for global solutions and the future.  These last four chapters place design thinking in context and illustrate that context with multiple examples and short case studies.

Strengths

Brown applies design thinking to some of the more perplexing challenges facing business executive.  There is much more to innovation than just new ideas and this book discusses how design thinking can be applied to including:

• Engineering Experiences (the experience economy),
• The transformation of products into services,
• Engaging customers and suppliers in the design and development process
• Recognizing the potential of social computing and Web 2.0 technologies
• Collaboration

That may sound like a lot for a 240-page book, but brown covers these topics individual and yet in an integrative way that shows the value of design thinking.

The book is comprehensive recognizing not only the need to design, but also the role of human centered design, change management, a new view on marketing and customer participation.

The book sheds new light on the role and power of innovation techniques like brainstorming and prototyping.

The discussion of how to involve people in the design process, how do design the experience and engage user-generated content was particularly powerful as this is a challenge for every enterprise, product or service.

Challenges

The book mentions examples of where design thinking was applied to new solutions but it does not go into depth about how that thinking produced a different solution than traditional approaches.  That is a particular challenge for readers who need a recipe for innovation, however this issue can be overcome with a little reflection and some web searching on the examples.

This is not a business book, so people expecting a business explanation and structure will find the book different.  That is part of the whole point of design thinking – to think different and this book helps illustrate that.

Overall, highly recommended and it’s a book that I will read again in about a month to pick up new insights as I learn more.  This is one book that is already underlined and markets up and I am sure it will be part of core library that I will refer to in the future.

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Category: Book Review CIO Innovation Leadership Strategy     Tags: Innovation, IT management, Social Computing

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