Disruptive Business Review

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Disruptive Business ReviewThis is the second book I have read from Alex Manu which sets the bar even higher than his previous book The Imagination Challenge. Alex challenges the convenional notion of innovation and provides an entirely new definition. In his book he systematically helps you rethink what you know about innovation and offers new models connecting desire and behaviour and how that is at the heart of creating a disruptive business. Too many of us focus on "the" disruptive technology but this is only a means to an end. The disruption comes from the behaviour and Disruptive Business will help you deconstruct this so you can apply it to your business, products, or services.
I paid the full price for this book before Amazon discounted it and have already gotten enormous value. No regrets. If you need to rethink your business or products or services I highly recommend this book, it will help you change your perspective a precondition for change. Disruptive BusinessDisruptive Business Overview"Disruptive Business" is a provocative and insightful redefinition of innovation as an outcome of human behaviour, a dynamic in constant change requiring the shaping of new responses in business and the economy. Alexander Manu believes that organizations must treat innovation not as a process to be managed but as an outcome that changes people's lives. In "Disruptive Business" he explains how innovation is the moment when human behaviour is changed by a particular invention, discovery or event. This position challenges the current understanding of innovation, as well as the current ecology in which innovation operates in organizations: its management, methods, tools, language, focus and metrics. The challenge extends to some of the labels currently applied to innovation typologies, such as 'disruptive innovation', seen today as addressing purely the technological side of an invention, rather than the more complex motivational and behavioural side. Alexander Manu considers that a disruption is not manifest in the moment a new technology is introduced.The disruption is the human being and manifest only when human motivation embraces the technology and uses it to modify and improve everyday life. Our acceptance and appropriation of new technologies creates the business disruption. Manu makes the case that successful innovation outcomes are answers to conscious or subconscious goals residing in human motivation, and motivation starts in desire. This position is consistent with the history of innovations that have changed, improved and reshaped human life, and also consistent with their roots and ethos. Humans are a 'perpetually wanting animal', bound to desire, to seek media for a better self and to need innovation. In this dynamic, innovation is the constant and business is the variable. The role of business is to create the tools, objects and services through which people can manifest what they want and who they are. The book provides a new perspective of current behavioural disruptions which are relevant to the continuity of business, as well as a set of practical methodologies for business design, aimed at creating innovation outcomes of value to users.

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Banking Technology Handbook Review

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Banking Technology Handbook ReviewKeyes describes the impact technology is having on banking and the tools banks are using to become faster and more efficient. E-commerce, bill pay/present,imaging, internet banking -- all are clearly detailed and made easy to understand. A good book for both those who've worked in the industry and for those who are starting out.Banking Technology Handbook OverviewThis desk reference for IT professionals in the banking industry provides information about the latest technologies to improve efficiency and security.Topics include
imaging
electronic exchange
Internet-based technologies
other automating systems
issues affecting all financial service sectors, such as the year 2000 problemBanking Technology Handbook is geared toward all levels of technology management and financial services management responsible for developing and implementing cutting-edge technology.

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Democratizing Innovation Review

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Democratizing Innovation ReviewThis is a wonderful book beyond the typical managerial how-to-do checklists. This is the reason why I recommend this book especially to managers and practitioners (innovation management researchers will read the book anyway as Eric von Hippel is one of the leading scholars in this field). Managers may find the book, on a first glance, academic, full with tables, numbers and references. But von Hippel is driven throughout his book by the motivation to present not only a fascinating new idea, but to show that this idea is already a reality and that there is empirical evidence that his concepts provide value for companies and customers. This is the main difference to other books in the area which present various fuzzy weak signals but no proof.
Von Hippel's book goes also beyond the open innovation idea of Chesbrough and others as mentioned by the first reviewer. Chesbrough names a lot of important actors in the innovation process, but neglects the - in my opinion - most important one: the customer or user of the innovation. Von Hippel starts exactly here. His approach is focused on the role of users and customers for the innovation process. In this regard, he builds on his earlier word of the 1970s and 1980s, but has a new story to tell: that user innovation is not only changing the corporate innovation process but also the nature of value creation: If manufacturing is outsourced to Asia, and users take over innovation (and perform this process superior to internal innovation processes), what is left for the corporation?Democratizing Innovation OverviewInnovation is rapidly becoming democratized. Users, aided by improvements in computer and communications technology, increasingly can develop their own new products and services. These innovating users—both individuals and firms—often freely share their innovations with others, creating user-innovation communities and a rich intellectual commons. In Democratizing Innovation, Eric von Hippel looks closely at this emerging system of user-centered innovation. He explains why and when users find it profitable to develop new products and services for themselves, and why it often pays users to reveal their innovations freely for the use of all.The trend toward democratized innovation can be seen in software and information products—most notably in the free and open-source software movement—but also in physical products. Von Hippel's many examples of user innovation in action range from surgical equipment to surfboards to software security features. He shows that product and service development is concentrated among "lead users," who are ahead on marketplace trends and whose innovations are often commercially attractive.Von Hippel argues that manufacturers should redesign their innovation processes and that they should systematically seek out innovations developed by users. He points to businesses—the custom semiconductor industry is one example—that have learned to assist user-innovators by providing them with toolkits for developing new products. User innovation has a positive impact on social welfare, and von Hippel proposes that government policies, including R&D subsidies and tax credits, should be realigned to eliminate biases against it. The goal of a democratized user-centered innovation system, says von Hippel, is well worth striving for. An electronic version of this book is available under a Creative Commons license.

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Value Innovation Portfolio Management: Achieving Double-Digit Growth Through Customer Value Review

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Value Innovation Portfolio Management: Achieving Double-Digit Growth Through Customer Value Review
The co-authors of this book are colleagues at Product Development Consulting, Inc. where they and their PDC associates devised and have since refined the Market-Driven Product Definition (MDPD®) methodology in response to their clients' need for a customer value dimension in their product portfolio management. "We watched many of our clients make MDPD an integral part of their product development processes, then go on to use the resulting database of customer value information as input to their portfolio processes. Thus was born our idea of providing a new methodology, philosophy, and criteria for evaluating changes to the portfolio [begin italics] before [end italics] making portfolio decisions and committing company resources."
What Sheila Mello (lead author) and her collaborators have learned about value innovation portfolio (VIP) management is provided in this book. Whether or not the organizations of those who read it achieve "double-digit growth through customer value" will depend on how effectively the MDPD methodology is executed.
Here are several of the questions to which Mayo and her collaborators respond:
1. How to define or re-define a product portfolio along the value dimension?
2. What are the leading causes of product failure and how to avoid or correct them?
3. What is innovation's proper role within the MDPD methodology?
4. In what respect(s) is the "optimized" portfolio "the sweet spot"?
5. In terms of MDPD alignment, why is the "why?" so important?
6. What is an "actionable" portfolio? A "fortified" portfolio?
7. How to use MDPD to "hear the voice of the customer"?
I especially appreciate the provision of the three appendices whose material will assist, indeed expedite the formulation and implementation of a successful value innovation portfolio (VIP). Decision-makers in smaller or at least less complex organizations may prefer to devise a mini-program, try it out, and then expand or modify it. This book will be invaluable to either approach.
That said, I presume to share two caveats. First, when creating and then developing a VIP, focus on what is most important...and most appropriate. Nail the fundamentals. For example, make certain that all decisions are based on accurate, current, and sufficient information. Keep in mind what Peter Drucker once observed: Also, beware of over-complicating the VIP design and implementation process. Recall what Albert Einstein once observed: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."Value Innovation Portfolio Management: Achieving Double-Digit Growth Through Customer Value OverviewThe quest for successful products - along with a simple, effective, and predictable way to determine in advance which ones will be successful - is a major concern for nearly every company out there. Most firms use traditional financial projections to select the best products, and many are often frustrated by under-achievement, lower than expected profits, and sometimes outright failure. "Value Innovation Portfolio Management" presents a pioneering new product-selection method based on high customer value, better business strategy alignment, and optimal investment intensity - allowing businesses to find success more often with new products. This ground-breaking new method is backed up by numerous case studies and examples that demonstrate significantly improved results using customer value as the yard-stick for product development.

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Creative Genius: An Innovation Guide for Business Leaders, Border Crossers and Game Changers Review

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Creative Genius: An Innovation Guide for Business Leaders, Border Crossers and Game Changers ReviewCREATIVE GENIUS: AN INNOVATION GUIDE FOR BUSINESS LEADERS, BORDER CROSSERS AND GAME CHANGERS provides a key to new ideas, technologies and directions and offers business leaders ideas for exploring creative places to further business. It introduces the Genius Lab, offering practice tools to locate these potentials and ensure best solutions from strategies of innovative companies from Apple to Samsung and IDEO. The concept of 'innovation drivers' is often talked about in business books, but this uses specifics and exercises on how to actually recognize - and act upon - the 'bigger picture', and is a pick for any innovation-oriented business collection!Creative Genius: An Innovation Guide for Business Leaders, Border Crossers and Game Changers OverviewTime and space. Genetics and robotics. Education and fashion. Possibilities limited only by our imaginations. The future is yours to create. Could you be the Leonardo da Vinci of our times?
Most ideas are incremental, quickly copied and suffocated by conventions. "Future back" thinking starts with stretching possibilities then makes them a reality "now forward". The best ideas emerge by seeing what everyone has seen, and thinking like nobody else. Newness occurs in the margins not the mainstream. Solutions emerge through powerful fusions of the best ideas into practical, useful concepts. Creative people rise up. Visionaries, border crossers and game changers. Engage your right brain, open your eyes, think more holistically... intuition rules.
From Apple to Blackberry, GE to Google, innovative companies stand out from the crowd not so much for their exceptional products, despite what one might assume, but for the way they challenge conventions, redefine markets, and change consumer expectations. Apple didn't just create the iPod; it envisioned the future of music and then made a product to service that future. And the same holds true for every highly innovative company. In Creative Genius, Peter Fisk presents ten tracks for innovation and provides business blueprints for making that innovation happen.Creative Genius is inspired by the imagination and perspective of Leonardo da Vinci, in order to drive creativity, design and innovation in more radical and powerful ways. It includes practical tools ranging from scenario planning and context reframing to accelerated innovation and market entry, plus 50 tracks, 25 tools, and 50 inspiring case studies.
Creative Genius is "the best and last" in the Genius series by bestselling author Peter Fisk. Others include Business Genius, Marketing Genius and Customer Genius.

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Built to Love: Creating Products That Captivate Customers Review

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Built to Love: Creating Products That Captivate Customers ReviewI have long understood the importance of putting customer desire up front when developing new products. "Built to Love" has given me several new tools to help capture and ponder what our customers might respond to. More importantly, the book has given us a better way to TALK about how our designs will be experienced by the user and what we might change to heighten that experience. Excellent examples from across a wide range of products give the reader a way to personalize the material.
"Built to Love" is that rare business book that offers insights and techniques that can be applied immediately.Built to Love: Creating Products That Captivate Customers Overview

Built to Love reveals how companies can create captivating products that energize the marketplace and set the standard for what customers want and expect. Firms often hope the answer is to produce the latest high technology devices – only to find that they fail to light up the marketplace. Or firms rely on ads that overstate or mislead, leaving the customer disappointed and disillusioned. Instead, a deeper emotional engagement between the customer and product is required, regardless of whether the products are physical products, services, technologies, software, systems, or brands.

Using a combination of industry-based research and laboratory experiments, the authors demonstrate that customers will richly pay for products that authentically provide emotional fulfillment. They uncover the science behind successful products that create an avid and loyal following, and they present evidence that product emotions increase a product's success in the marketplace as well as a firm's success in the stock market (even when the economy is down!).

A practical how-to guide, the book next shows how to analyze customers' emotional needs and translate those needs into features that galvanize customers. Throughout, the book uses revealing case studies that show how to energize customers in both consumer and business-to-business worlds, in both large and small firms.


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Next Generation Product Development : How to Increase Productivity, Cut Costs, and Reduce Cycle Times Review

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Next Generation Product Development : How to Increase Productivity, Cut Costs, and Reduce Cycle Times ReviewReview of:
"Next Generation Product Development" by Michael E. McGrath
The last paragraph of Michael E. McGrath's newest book "Next Generation Product Development" boldly states that "product development has never been for the faint of heart." And I suspect that most everyone who has ever been involved in such activities will quickly shake their head "yes" to this "truth" statement, and quietly wish there was a better way. Fortunately in his new book McGrath guides us to this better way--a way that offers "more opportunity and promise for getting better new products to market faster, WHILE DOING MORE WITH LESS." The claim is nothing short of a renaissance of product development capability.
I like this book a lot. I like the multi-faceted emphasis on integration. I like the productivity theme and the need for new management processes. And I like the idea that we are only beginning the renaissance of product development capability, especially given the growth of collaborative development.
I confess that I do not like the continued use of the DCM abbreviation (it stands for "development chain management.)" But I suppose I can learn to live with another "alphabet name" because it does get to the heart of the matter--how to manage a lot of INTERDEPENDENT projects, all of which are going on at the same time. Of particular importance are McGrath's thoughts involving a "networked team," new concepts which I think will be fundamental to tomorrow's successful product development.
To join this renaissance, exactly where does one begin? McGrath offers three entry points: changes in resource management, changes in project management, or changes in strategy management. I suppose someone will try all three at once, but frankly just one is probably a lot for an organization to swallow. For different entry points McGrath offers us guidance, with levels of maturity assessments and/or stages of implementation. But even still, there is a lot of material to assimilate and multiple readings of many book sections will be needed to fully comprehend his recommendations.
However I suggest that you don't spend an excessive amount of time studying. Organizations mainly learn by doing, and this book lays out the "learn by doing" path toward success. Past generations of development have emphasized invention, project management, or time-to-market. This next generation is a path toward productivity within the entire development enterprise. It is a path toward "better decision making, better investment in R&D, better return on that investment, more collaboration with external partners, and true empowerment of development activity."
I suggest that you buy the book and begin.
Nils L. Dailey
N.L. Dailey AssociatesNext Generation Product Development : How to Increase Productivity, Cut Costs, and Reduce Cycle Times Overview
A Hands-on manager's guide to making the most of today's product development breakthroughs

A quarter century after MRP first transformed the global manufacturing arena, Next Generation Product Development stands poised to similarly impact new product development. This movement-defining book gives R&D professionals an in-depth explanation of the ways in which companies are able to achieve substantially higher levels of development productivity, while better aligning product development with strategy through new practices and systems.

Processes explored in Next Generation Product Development, and enabled by cutting-edge new-enterprise software, promise to explode the possibilities of what product development professionals can accomplish. This hands-on practitioner's guidebook will:

Establish a common set of frameworks and concepts
Introduce new project portfolio and product strategy management practices
Help R&D professionals increase productivity by 30 to 50 percent


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Staying Power: Six Enduring Principles for Managing Strategy and Innovation in an Uncertain World (Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies) Review

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Staying Power: Six Enduring Principles for Managing Strategy and Innovation in an Uncertain World (Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies) ReviewProfessor Cusumano's "Staying Power" is a major contribution in the field of business strategy.
I am in the business of technology and management strategy consulting and think his ideas have enormous value to any executive grappling with the implications and opportunities of cloud-computing enabled business. His six principles are easy to grasp. They are deceptively simple and are particularly powerful in a commercial and public sector business climate of austerity where new business models are emerging that will fuel our next growth cycle, but are disrupting incumbents. The introduction of cloud computing is beginning to have a disruptive effect on a wide range of business. Living through that disruption in day-to-day business can make it hard to see the bigger patterns at play and think through what the future state will look like. Professor Cusumano's elaboration of the platform/complementer services model with his excellent historical context and current market analysis makes it much clearer where we are headed in my industry and to seize emerging opportunities.
I purchased the book based on an Amazon recommendation and I am very grateful I did. The book is written in a more academic style than is typical of the more popular style business and management books. In fact, I picked it up and sat it down several times before committing to the book. It is not a book designed to skim. It requires concentration and focus to understand how Professor Cusumano has reached the conclusions he has. His ability to characterize the current disruptive innovation cycle in the information technology business using his analysis of the history of both the information technology and automotive industry is excellent. It is a fascinating story leading up to today's new business models.
Once I started really focusing on the book, I could not put it down. My copy is full of highlighter pen marks and 3M stickers. Kudos to Professor Cusumano for a valuable tool for business executives trying to figure out how to proactively take advantage of the cloud-enabled business models that are emerging. I hope that he extends this work with additional video and supplementary blog or presentation materials to continue to expand on his ideas and share more examples of the ideas in action. I have already begun converting his ideas into execution in my business.Staying Power: Six Enduring Principles for Managing Strategy and Innovation in an Uncertain World (Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies) OverviewBusiness news tends to focus on the travails of a handful of giants: Apple's iPad, the Toyota recall, the controversy over Google's book-digitization program. Whatever the day's headlines, though, most of these firms have been there before--up and down, written off and overpraised--yet they endured and triumphed. What is their secret? What is it that has lifted them to preeminence and allowed them to come out of each crisis stronger than before?In Staying Power, Michael A. Cusumano provides the answers. A bestselling business author and leading scholar, Cusumano has spent a quarter of a century studying the world's most successful companies--many of them from the inside, by serving as an advisor to more than one hundred firms. He identifies six critical principles that have driven the success of today's foremost companies, including Google, Intel, Apple, JVC, Toyota, and Microsoft. He argues that companies today must develop distinctive organizational capabilities, not just business strategies; focus on platforms and services, not just products; pull information from the market, responding to real-time changes in demand and competitive conditions, and not just push products out; achieve economies of scope, not just scale, by creating efficiencies across all a firm's activities; and acquire flexibility, in addition to efficiency, to quickly adapt to a volatile marketplace. Drawing on real-life examples, he illustrates how the best companies put these principles into practice, identifying precisely how these ideas have lead to concrete success time after time.Business books, the author notes, often promote short-lived fads in management thinking. But Staying Power is different. Written by a bestselling international expert, this book focuses on lasting success, analyzing the fundamental elements common to the leading competitors in the world today.

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The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value With Customers Review

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The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value With Customers ReviewThe future is here. Competition is getting tougher and customers are more difficult to please. On the other hand everything is connected, objects are embedded with sensors and software and information flows instantly to all corners of the world , thanks to the communications revolution. This book essentially looks at a networked world where customers and companies are inseparable and are constantly in interaction. In this paradigm, the framework of DART - Dialogue, Access, Risk Assessment and Transparency is introduced and the book proceeds to explain each of these in detail.
The word Co-creation will get included in your daily vocabulary sooner than you expect. Lots of diagrams and case studies are thrown into every chapter. But frankly, there is no concept that is radically different from some of the pioneering works on similar topics already published. To list a few :
-Customer.Com by Particia Seybold
-How to Grow when Markets Don't by Adrian Slywotzky
-The Innovator's solution by Clayton Christensen
-Adapt or Die : Turning your Supply Chain into an Adaptive Business Network by Bob Betts , Claus Heinrich
-Experimentation Matters: Unlocking the Potential of New Technologies for Innovation by Stephen Thomke
-Priceless: Turning Ordinary Products into Extraordinary Experiences by Diana Lasalle, Terry A. Britton
-The Agenda: What Every Business must do to Dominate the Decade by Michael Hammer
Most of the case studies in this book are repetitions from these or are similar in concepts or processes in creating value for ( or along with) the customer. The authors have duly acknowledged and referred to an elaborate list of books and articles under "Aids to Exploration". But my point is that after going through some of the key works listed above, this book fails to impress on originality.
Towards the end of the book, Knowledge Management is brought in as one of the strategic tools that can be integrated into the co-creation framework.
It is certainly interesting to go through the book though it is a combination of old ideas in a new packaging. Young MBAs will find lots of new jargon that can be put to profitable use in job interviews.The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value With Customers Overview

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Unleashing Innovation: How Whirlpool Transformed an Industry Review

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Unleashing Innovation: How Whirlpool Transformed an Industry ReviewThough a voracious reader, I must confess that this is the first time I have reviewed a book; however, this book had such an impact on me I felt compelled to do so! I have been active in the innovation space for almost two decades now and have never before come across such a thoughtful and practical book. Unleashing Innovation is one of those rare business books that live up to what the title promises.

With the same profound insight, simplicity, and uncommon sense that propelled the authors' earlier book -- Strategic Innovation -- to worldwide acclaim, this paradigm-changing book details a seven-step approach that blends strategic, organizational, and emotional elements into a holistic and seamless process.
Unleashing Innovation shows readers how to embed innovation into an organization, thereby making it the responsibility of every employee in the company. More specifically, it explains: how to get the 'embedment' process started; how to give it purpose and direction (i.e., how to build a strategic architecture); how to align management systems to ensure they compliment and support the embedment initiative; how to gain and sustain momentum once the embedment process has taken root; how to use creativity and innovation to enrich the lives of all involved.
If ever there was a time when creativity and innovation was necessary for the survival and growth of any organization, it is now. This landmark book, more than any other I know, arms you with the tools to embed innovation into the DNA of your organization, and in so doing, ensure its long-term survival.
Read and enjoy!Unleashing Innovation: How Whirlpool Transformed an Industry OverviewIn publications such as BusinessWeek and Fast Company, the media have celebrated Whirlpool's transformation into a leading-edge innovator and Nancy Tennant Snyder's role as chief innovation officer. Ten years after this remarkable transformation, Unleashing Innovation tells the inside story of one of the most successful innovation turnarounds in American history. Nancy Tennant Snyder and coauthor Deborah L. Duarte reveal how Whirlpool undertook one of the largest change efforts in corporate history and show how innovation was embedded throughout the company, which ultimately lead to bottom-line results.

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Serious Play: How the World's Best Companies Simulate to Innovate Review

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Serious Play: How the World's Best Companies Simulate to Innovate ReviewThere is more significance to the title than one may initially assume. Some "play" can be taken much too seriously as when overzealous parents scream at their children as they begin to compete in organized sports; other "play" is not treated seriously enough as when a corporation discourages (perhaps even punishes) innovative thinking unless it has an immediate and favorable impact on the bottom line. Many executives, thus abused, may then vent their frustrations by behaving boorishly at a Little League game.
In the Foreword, Tom Peters quotes Schrage's assertion that "Innovative prototypes generate innovative teams. Not vice versa." Peters then observes that, in Serious Play, the "big idea" is that "the prototyping process becomes the scaffolding" for an enterprise's approach to innovation. As Schrage explains, "I have always enjoyed rehearsals more than performances." I suggest that you keep that statement clearly in mind as you proceed through the book. It reveals much about Schrage's perspective on the correlations between prototypes and innovation.
Here is how the book is organized: Part I: Getting Real, Part II: Model Behavior, and Part III:S(t)imulating Innovation. Schrage then provides a User's Guide and Bibliography. Throughout the book, he shares a wealth of real-world experience which explains what innovation is, and, what it can help to accomplish, not only with the design of a new product or service but also with the formulation of new and better ways for people to work together. The key is simulation; moreover, "not just playing with representations of ideas" (lots of ideas, the more the better) but "playing with the various versions of representations of ideas."
Near the end of the final chapter, Schrage poses a number of critically important questions, suggesting that the "best hope for answering these questions, or coping with their implications, is to build or grow models and play with them seriously." The world's best companies simulate to innovate. For example: American Airlines, Boeing, DaimlerChrysler, General Electric, IBM, IDEO, Walt Disney, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft, and Royal Dutch Shell. Schrage believes that the creative tensions between innovators who design and innovators who evolve "will likely result in breakthroughs in products, services, and their yet-to-be-anticipated hybrids." So, why not prototype how to prototype? Why not play simulation games which reveal new and better ways to simulate?
Tom Peters describes Serious Play as "simply the best book on innovation I've ever read." I agree. Perhaps you will, also.Serious Play: How the World's Best Companies Simulate to Innovate Overview

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Exposing the Magic of Design: A Practitioner's Guide to the Methods and Theory of Synthesis (Oxford Series in Human-Technology Interaction) Review

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Exposing the Magic of Design: A Practitioner's Guide to the Methods and Theory of Synthesis (Oxford Series in Human-Technology Interaction) ReviewAn excellent book that provides what most books don't: theory and principles backed up by practical examples and clear guidance on how to execute. It's a book for those who not only want to understand but want to do. "Exposing the Magic of Design" will help those who want to create design-centric organizations and lead their industries.Exposing the Magic of Design: A Practitioner's Guide to the Methods and Theory of Synthesis (Oxford Series in Human-Technology Interaction) OverviewAs the world deals with increasing complexity -- in issues of sustainability, finance, culture and technology -- business and governments are searching for a form of problem solving that can deal with the unprecedented levels of ambiguity and chaos. Traditional "linear thinking" has been disparaged by the popular media as being inadequate for dealing with the global economic crisis. Standard forms of marketing and product development have been rejected by businesses who need to find a way to stay competitive in a global economy. Yet little has been offered as an alternative. It is not enough to demand that someone "be more innovative" without giving him the tools to succeed.Design synthesis is a way of thinking about complicated, multifaceted problems of this scale with a repeatable degree of success. Design synthesis methods can be applied in business, with the goal of producing new and compelling products and services, and they can be applied in government, with the goal of changing culture and bettering society. In both contexts, however, there is a need for speed and for aggressive action. This text is immediately relevant, and is more relevant than ever, as we acknowledge and continually reference a feeling of an impending and massive change. Simply, this text is intended to act as a practitioner's guide to exposing the magic of design.There are three simple goals for this text.The first goal is to present a theory of design synthesis in a simple and concise manner. This theory is based on academic research and discourse, but presented in a way that is clear and valuable to a practicing design manager, designer or design researcher. This theory of design synthesis can then be used to substantiate single methods of synthesis.The second goal is to offer a rationalization of why design synthesis is important, both in a general sense ("why should I care about this at all?") as well as in a more immediate sense ("why should I care about this right now?").The final goal is to present a set of actionable, learnable methods for design synthesis that can be applied to any design problem. Practicing industrial designers, interaction designers, interface designers, and designers of other disciplines can use these methods to make sense of complicated design problems and to move seamlessly from various forms of research to design. The methods can add a systematic sense of rigor to an otherwise subjective, often introspective process.

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Innovation: The Five Disciplines for Creating What Customers Want Review

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Innovation: The Five Disciplines for Creating What Customers Want ReviewEverybody talks about "innovation" these days, but here's a practical guide to getting it right. Carlson writes in an engaging manner, with real-world examples. It all just seems to make sense when you read it. Any company or organization out there that wants long-term success would do well to follow the five disciplines described in this book.Innovation: The Five Disciplines for Creating What Customers Want Overview

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Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation Review

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Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation ReviewTim Brown has had an amazing career working at the premier design firm in the country, IDEO. This book in part recounts stories of various clients they have worked for, and in part lays out a vision for how design can be more human centric. He discusses using these approaches for everything ranging from industrial design to social engineering.
Although the stories about the various clients are interesting, I found the book to be so high level that it was hard to take away practical steps. I would have found the book more valuable if instead of keeping the discussion at the very highest level (brainstorming is good, need to control the chaos, design goes through phases, etc) it would take some of the principles discussed and look at specifics -- here is a specific client interaction where we did x, y, z. Here is why we did it. Here is what happened. Here is a specific failure case. Here is what we learned.
Without it, although the book covers a lot of interesting case studies, it doesn't do so in a way in which I felt that I have knowledge of things to do differently in my day to day creative activities within my company, or ways in which I could interact with clients better.Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation OverviewThe myth of innovation is that brilliant ideas leap fully formed from the minds of geniuses. The reality is that most innovations come from a process of rigorous examination through which great ideas are identified and developed before being realized as new offerings and capabilities. This book introduces the idea of design thinking‚ the collaborative process by which the designer′s sensibilities and methods are employed to match people′s needs not only with what is technically feasible and a viable business strategy. In short‚ design thinking converts need into demand. It′s a human−centered approach to problem solving that helps people and organizations become more innovative and more creative. Design thinking is not just applicable to so−called creative industries or people who work in the design field. It′s a methodology that has been used by organizations such as Kaiser Permanente to icnrease the quality of patient care by re−examining the ways that their nurses manage shift change‚ or Kraft to rethink supply chain management. This is not a book by designers for designers; this is a book for creative leaders seeking to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization‚ product‚ or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.

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Designing Interactions Review

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Designing Interactions Review(I originally gave this book a more positive review. Amazon won't let me change the star rating. I give this book TWO stars, not four.)
This book is fairly impressive at first glance. Seven-hundred plus pages, adequately footnoted, and nicely designed. I can't imagine anyone in the field of interaction design not enjoying cracking open Moggridge's book.
But "Designing Interactions" isn't quite what I thought it would be, and my first optimistic impressions were terribly wrong. It is, as Bruce Sterling's blurb describes it, "a labor of love." It's really "The History of Designing Interactions." More specifically, it's "The History of how Bill Moggridge, his company IDEO, and A Few Other People Mostly in California Designed Interactions." It's something of a hagiography--biographies of designer-saints, whose every effort was nothing less than beautiful, innovative, useable and useful. Failures, missteps, or significant-but-ugly designs (Windows 3.1 gets about a sentence) are minimized. That makes it feel like something of a whitewash.
It actually reminds me a lot of "The Art of Unix Programming" in its combination of cultural and technological history, mixed with practical sections. But where the people in "The Art of Unix Programming" come across as modest smart people, sort of tinkering along inventing an entire paradigm, Moggridge's subjects are sort of bathed in this golden California glow of eternal optimistic technophilia; it's not that the design of buttons and menus isn't a moral, cultural, and aesthetic imperative (cause it is), but in Moggridge's text it just all feels a little...inevitable. It's also historically dubious. Moggridge doesn't use interviews well, and they seem to be basically his only research here. Relying on the memories of his old design buddies is an extraordinarily sloppy way to write history. Other evidence for claims and facts is sadly lacking. Readers need to bring a very skeptical eye to the content here.
It's also depressingly full of IDEO work, IDEO employees, and IDEO methods. Which would almost be ok if Moggridge were more transparent about his own role as founder and current senior employee of that company. As it is, the conflict of interest here is a pretty crass. (After all, Moggridge stands to personally and professionally benefit from defining "interaction design" entirely around his own business, right?)
But I think if you do this kind of work, you'll enjoy the histories of the mouse, the menu, or the Palm Pilot, and seeing lots of sketches and diagrams and screenshots. It *is* kind of cool to see stuff like Bill Atkinson's sketches of the Apple Lisa. It also feels quite current, and there are good sections on mobile devices, patterns of technology adoption, play, service design, critical design, and ubiquitous computation. Though the downside of this breadth is that the whole thing feels like a grab bag approach. There are more than a few genuinely disappointing parts: the chapter on the internet is pretty poor, basically equating "the Internet" with Google and a couple of long-gone fancy web navigation experiments. It's a chapter that's little more than a Silicon Valley courtier's homage to the boy kings Larry and Sergey. What's this doing in a book on interaction design, Bill?
It's interesting to compare "Designing Interactions" with Dan Saffer's new book with a slightly different title: "Designing for Interaction." Both books use interviews, but Saffer's are short sidebars, Moggridge's book is *mostly* interviews. Though Moggridge's last chapter is a practical section, about the length of Saffer's whole book, Saffer *still* manages to cover a lot more of the nuts and bolts, day to day work of interaction design.Designing Interactions OverviewDigital technology has changed the way we interact with everything fromthe games we play to the tools we use at work. Designers of digital technologyproducts no longer regard their job as designing a physical object--beautiful orutilitarian--but as designing our interactions with it. In Designing Interactions,award-winning designer Bill Moggridge introduces us to forty influential designerswho have shaped our interaction with technology. Moggridge, designer of the firstlaptop computer (the GRiD Compass, 1981) and a founder of the design firm IDEO,tells us these stories from an industry insider's viewpoint, tracing the evolutionof ideas from inspiration to outcome. The innovators he interviews--including WillWright, creator of The Sims, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, andDoug Engelbart, Bill Atkinson, and others involved in the invention and developmentof the mouse and the desktop--have been instrumental in making a difference in thedesign of interactions. Their stories chart the history of entrepreneurial designdevelopment for technology.Moggridge and his interviewees discuss such questions aswhy a personal computer has a window in a desktop, what made Palm's handheldorganizers so successful, what turns a game into a hobby, why Google is the searchengine of choice, and why 30 million people in Japan choose the i-mode service fortheir cell phones. And Moggridge tells the story of his own design process andexplains the focus on people and prototypes that has been successful at IDEO--howthe needs and desires of people can inspire innovative designs and how prototypingmethods are evolving for the design of digital technology.Designing Interactions isillustrated with more than 700 images, with color throughout. Accompanying the bookis a DVD that contains segments from all the interviews intercut with examples ofthe interactions under discussion.Interviews with:Bill Atkinson • DurrellBishop • Brendan Boyle • Dennis Boyle • Paul Bradley • DuaneBray • Sergey Brin • Stu Card • Gillian Crampton Smith • ChrisDowns• Tony Dunne • John Ellenby • Doug Englebart • Jane FultonSuri • Bill Gaver • Bing Gordon • Rob Haitani • Jeff Hawkins• Matt Hunter • Hiroshi Ishii • Bert Keely • David Kelley •Rikako Kojima • Brenda Laurel • David Liddle • Lavrans Løvlie •John Maeda • Paul Mercer • Tim Mott • Joy Mountford • TakeshiNatsuno • Larry Page • Mark Podlaseck • Fiona Raby • CordellRatzlaff • Ben Reason • Jun Rekimoto • Steve Rogers • FranSamalionis • Larry Tesler • Bill Verplank • Terry Winograd •Will Wright

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Visual Tools for Transforming Information Into Knowledge Review

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Visual Tools for Transforming Information Into Knowledge ReviewThis book discusses the value visual mapping: brainstorming, graphic organizers, and concept mapping and offers suggestions for student use. More importantly, the book validates these visual maps with research, software references, and other authors and books. It's a great way to map student thinking and if done correctly, students can transfer the skills when needed. The author relies less on reproducible orangizers and more on student-centered products in conjunction with questions, collaborating and evaluating. A good resource for a team to tackle interdisciplinary units. Additionally, the author demonstrates visual mapping uses in the business world and on a district or school level. Great staff development idea.Visual Tools for Transforming Information Into Knowledge OverviewFeaturing new research and examples, this practical resource focuses on brainstorming webs, graphic organizers, and concept maps to improve instruction and enhance students' cognitive development.

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Innovation Happens Elsewhere: Open Source as Business Strategy Review

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Innovation Happens Elsewhere: Open Source as Business Strategy ReviewThe authoors have made this book available for reading online under a creative commons license at:
http://dreamsongs.com/IHE/IHE.html
This is very generous of the authors and thankfully is happening more and more with FOSS related books. - see Karl Fogels "Producing Open source" or Lessigs "Free Culture".
By all means buy the hardcopy if you like the online version. Personally I'm more likely to want to support an author who is good enough to make the material available online.Innovation Happens Elsewhere: Open Source as Business Strategy Overview

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Designing for Growth: A Design Thinking Toolkit for Managers (Columbia Business School Publishing) Review

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Designing for Growth: A Design Thinking Toolkit for Managers (Columbia Business School Publishing) ReviewThere has been a veritable onslaught of strategy and business 'design' literature published in the past few years. Most of it is interesting but falls into one of two traps: either it's too theoretical to put into action, or it's directed to a choir of the design-familiar and leaves everyone else behind. Liedtka and Ogilvie break the mold with their new book, providing a framework and a tool kit to help almost anyone with interest and motivation explore the power of design thinking.
It starts with a relatively simple point. Most of the time, most of the world sees the design process as messy and unpredictable and nonlinear and twisted and terribly inefficient. In many organizations, that's why design is often considered a black box so impenetrable that it's outsourced to marketers, product developers, and, well, designers. Liedtka and Ogilvie take the mess and unbundle it all into a four-phase, 10-step framework that starts to look more like a process that individuals and organizations can learn and replicate.
While the steps are somewhat familiar, the recommended approaches in each phase sound reasonable but are more challenging for most people to put into practice. (Try explaining to a typical business planner that you're going to generate new business offerings based on research you conduct with a dozen or so customers, and you'll see what I mean.) Lucky for all of us, Designing for Growth provides concrete tools and step-by-step instructions and plenty of real-life examples for each step of the journey so that there's sufficient structure to help the reader navigate the discomfort of trying something new.
I've been fortunate enough to collaborate with Liedtka and she's fond of saying that she's not a designer, and that if she and her faculty colleagues can make good use of the Designing for Growth tools then anyone can. Having watched her in action, I'd say she's more of a designer than she'd like to admit, though perhaps not in a traditional sense. Because for me -- and as illustrated throughout Designing for Growth -- being a designer isn't about being artistic or clever or even all that creative. Being a designer is about approaching a complex problem with curiosity and empathy and patience and then having the discipline to explore many possible answers before selecting a path forward. This book helps bring out that design thinker in each of us.Designing for Growth: A Design Thinking Toolkit for Managers (Columbia Business School Publishing) OverviewJeanne Liedtka and Tim Ogilvie educate readers in one of the hottest trends in business: "design thinking," or the ability to turn abstract ideas into practical applications for maximal business growth. Liedtka and Ogilvie cover the mind-set, techniques, and vocabulary of design thinking, unpack the mysterious connection between design and growth, and teach managers in a straightforward way how to exploit design's exciting potential. Exemplified by Apple and the success of its elegant products and cultivated by high-profile design firms such as IDEO, design thinking unlocks creative right-brain capabilities to solve a range of problems. This approach has become a necessary component of successful business practice, helping managers turn abstract concepts into everyday tools that grow business while minimizing risk. (9/7/11)

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McLuhan for Managers: New Tools for New Thinking Review

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McLuhan for Managers: New Tools for New Thinking ReviewA wonderful book that will help you think about your business or your clients business in new ways. A great set of simple thinking tools that help get way beyond the simplisitic analysis that SWAT will get you. It lets you see effects of effects of effects.McLuhan for Managers: New Tools for New Thinking Overview

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