This is the year that Design Thinking tipped as a full-fledged management approach. The wave has been building for a few years and now seems to be cresting, as indicated by the spate of new books on the subject. Of the many books coming out, here’s my list of picks to round out your D-Think library. (While all are new this year, not all are out yet.)
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A Fine Line: How Design Strategies Are Shaping the Future of Business by Harmut Esslinger (Jossey-Bass, June 29, 2009). Hartmut Esslinger is the founder of frog design, a leading global innovation firm. He is also one of the most respected designers and business consultants in the world, having spent forty years helping build the world’s most recognizable brands, such as Sony, Louis Vuitton, Lufthansa, Disney, Hewlett-Packard, SAP, Microsoft, and Apple. Most consider him one of the key catalysts of the design revolution. His book shows how he and his firm build creative design into the framework of an organization’s competitive strategy and gives the reader a step-by-step overview of the innovation process. Esslinger reveals how to arrive at a design that reflects an intense human experience that will connect strongly with consumers.
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Design-Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean by Roberto Verganti (Harvard Business School Press, August 3, 2009). Roberto Verganti is Professor of Management at Innovationat Politecnico di Milano and the founder of Project Science, a consulting institute that advises global corporations on the management of strategic innovation. Roberto authored the popular article “Innovating Through Design,” published in the Harvard Business Review December 2006 issue.
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Change By Design: How Design Thinking Tranforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation by Tim Brown (HarperBusiness, September 29, 2009). Tim Brown is the CEO of IDEO. According to Stanford professor and author Bob Sutton, “Tim Brown has written the definitive book on design thinking. Brown’s wit, experience, and compelling stories create a delightful journey. His masterpiece captures the emotions, mindset, and methods required for designing everything from a product, to an experience, to a strategy in entirely different ways.”
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The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking Is the Next Competitive Advantage by Roger Martin (Harvard Business School Press, November 9, 2009). Roger Martin is dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and a professor of strategic management at the school. He has written widely on the intersection of design and business. You can download a free PDF of his Rotman Journal article here.
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Design Thinking: Integrating Innovation, Customer Experience, and Brand Value, edited by Thomas Lockwood (Allworth Press, 3rd edition, November 10, 2009). Thomas Lockwood is president of the Design Management Institute (DMI), as well as being the publisher of DMI’s Design Management Review and Design Management Journal. This book is an anthology of essays, intriguing case studies, and practical advice from industry experts. It’s organized into three sections which focus on the use of design for innovation and brand-building, the emerging role of service design, and the design of meaningful customer experiences.
I also suggest two more titles that aren’t about Design Thinking but focus on two critical ingredients of good design process management: collaboration and motivation.
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Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results by Morten Hansen (Harvard Business School Press, May 11, 2009). Morten Hansen is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and INSEAD in France, as well as a management consultant with the Boston Consulting Group. According to Jim Collins, “This book represents the culmination of fifteen years of some of the best research on the topic of effective collaboration. It does not matter whether you lead a business, conduct an orchestra, guide a school, operate a hospital, command a brigade, run for public office, direct a government agency, or coach a sports team—every complex enterprise requires collaboration.”
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Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink (Riverhead Hardcover, December 29, 2009). Just in time for the New Year, this book by Dan Pink promises some great new insights into the drivers of creativity—namely autonomy, purpose, and mastery. Dan’s bestselling book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future is probably the first widely-read and accepted take on design thinking, before the concept actually had a label. To get a sneak peak at Drive, take a look at Dan’s recent TED talk.
Matthew E. May is the author of In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing and blogs here. You can follow him on Twitter here.
