The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage |  | Author: Roger L. Martin
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
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Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 1705
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.8 x 1
ISBN: 1422177807
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.4063
EAN: 9781422177808
ASIN: 1422177807
Publication Date: November 9, 2009 (New: Last 30 Days)
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Product Description
Most companies today have innovation envy. They yearn to come up with a game-changing innovation like Apple's iPod, or create an entirely new category like Facebook. Many make genuine efforts to be innovative-they spend on R&D, bring in creative designers, hire innovation consultants. But they get disappointing results.
Why? In The Design of Business, Roger Martin offers a compelling and provocative answer: we rely far too exclusively on analytical thinking, which merely refines current knowledge, producing small improvements to the status quo.
To innovate and win, companies need design thinking. This form of thinking is rooted in how knowledge advances from one stage to another-from mystery (something we can't explain) to heuristic (a rule of thumb that guides us toward solution) to algorithm (a predictable formula for producing an answer) to code (when the formula becomes so predictable it can be fully automated). As knowledge advances across the stages, productivity grows and costs drop-creating massive value for companies.
Martin shows how leading companies such as Procter & Gamble, Cirque du Soleil, RIM, and others use design thinking to push knowledge through the stages in ways that produce breakthrough innovations and competitive advantage.
Filled with deep insights and fresh perspectives, The Design of Business reveals the true foundation of successful, profitable innovation.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 6
 Organizations are only sustainable if the are able to blend in design thinking November 1, 2009
Steven Forth (Cambridge MA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Every few years I run into a book that I want to give out to many people. The most recent candidates for this have been Peter Drucker's How to Manage Oneself and Cradle-to-Cradle Design by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. Roger Martin's new book one is another. I plan to buy copies for all three of my children, for the CEOs of companies I have shares in, and additional copies to scatter amongst my staff at LeveragePoint. This book is that good. I also hope it will direct people to another of Roger Martin's books, The Opposable Mind.
Why does this book matter? It provides a simple way of thinking through the flow of innovation from Mystery through Heuristics to Algorithms in an organization. It then looks at the role of understanding the why (validity) as well as the what (reliability). The stories from companies as varied as McDonalds and P&G to Hermann-Miller, Research in Motion and Cirque de Soleil are fascinating and informative and give a real business context to the general model. The lateral move to include Charles Sanders Pierce and abductive logic is a creative blend (and I use the term in the technical sense of Mark Turner) that is an important piece of design thinking in its own right.
I believe that Martin is correct, only companies that embrace design thinking as a core capability have any hope of long-term sustainability and competitive advantage. What he is proposing is an alternative and ultimately powerful solution to Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma.
Some will argue that the book is shallow and that it fails to uncover the essentials of design thinking. This is true, but the book is intended to motivate people to think more deeply about the role of design in business and not to be a primer on design thinking itself. In any case, design thinking is a nascent discipline and it is hard to point to anyone book that really unfolds its power. Candidates would be Bill Buxton's Sketching User Experiences, John Maeda's Simplicity and the book from Bruce Mau's great exhibition Massive Change. People who need to go deeper, anyone engaged in design writ large, will need to read widely and engage in many passionate discussions. My own essential texts on design thinking include various works from the Adolf Loos, the Bauhaus crowd, Baldwin & Clark's Design Rules, Stuart Kaufmann's The Origins of Order, Christopher Alexander's Pattern Language and of course Edward Tufte's books beginning with The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. I am also working to broaden my thinking by bringing in other cultural traditions (Japan and Russia for example have deep design traditions) and disciplines (especially architecture, urban planning and software engineering). More important than reading books, though, is to develop the habit of observing how things are designed and used in the world and uncovering the choices (often unconscious) that the designers made. One way to do this is through conversations, and one place these conversations are taking place is on the Design Thinking group at LinkedIn.
 Deep thoughts, descriptions but not enough prescription October 31, 2009
M. McDonald (Chicago, IL United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Design of Business by Roger Martin is a thought-provoking book that seeks to probe the reasons behind the current state of business and the new ways of thinking needed to change that state for the better. The book in my opinion is miss-titled as it is more about thinking than design. This does not make it a bad book, but one that will disappoint readers looking for design techniques based on the title.
Martin's thesis centers around a few key concepts including:
The knowledge funnel where ideas and innovations move from exploring mysteries of business and customers, to defining heuristics and finally developing algorithms. While the funnel looks like a traditional innovation process, Martin applies it to aspects of organizational design, behavior and innovation to good effect.
Martin points to the difference between managing businesses for reliability and seeking validity. Reliability concentrates on managing predictable performance, financials, reducing process variance and establishing control. Validity concentrates on learning what is right based more on heuristics and qualitative than quantitative methods. Martin's conjecture is that we need both, but probably need more validity to generate the creativity and innovation needed to survive in a dynamic market.
Design thinking, here Martin borrows Tim Brown of IDEO's definition and makes the connection between design thinking and abductive reasoning which centers around observing data that does not fit with existing models or patterns. Abductive reasoning is in sharp contrast to deductive and inductive thinking that dominant business management.
The case studies on P&G, RIM, Cirque du Soldier are predictable and read more like narrative stories of executive actions rather than an analysis of what these companies did to redesign and innovate in their company. Frankly I have read other authors case studies of these companies and found them more valuable.
The combination of all of this gives me the impression that the book is a set of ideas in search of an application. Now that may sound harsh, but I kept looking for support on how I can apply these ideas by learning from others.
Martin does include a discussion about a personal knowledge system that consists of the way you view the world, the tools you use to organize your thinking and understanding and finally the experience that you need to build your sensitivity skills. The Personal Knowledge system is an example of what I am talking about, good ideas, presented in a clear fashion but without a particular set of next steps or examples of how mere mortals have transformed themselves.
Using Martin's terminology I get his ideas and see them as valid, but I was looking for a little reliability based tools and approaches to turn valid ideas into action and results.
The book presents its ideas in a fairly academic context, discussed more as ideas than recipes or a framework for designing a business. That is a disappointment as the book was recommended to me as a design book.
I recommend the book for people who want to explore the way of thinking and deep systems behind design thinking. I cannot recommend the book for people who are looking to learn about how to apply design thinking. If you are looking for a good design thinking book go to the source Tim Brown's new book Change by Design which has a greater focus on understanding design thinking at an actionable level.
 Solving Wicked Problems October 21, 2009
Jeffrey Phillips (Raleigh, NC)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
It's unfair that some individuals can write so well about topics that can be a bit esoteric. Roger Martin, who is dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, has produced yet another good book about thinking differently. His first book, The Opposable Mind, captured how good business leaders can see past the traditional "either-or" alternatives to create "both-and" options.
In The Design of Business, Martin offers a view that suggests that design should be the centerpiece or the starting point for much of the work we do in business, and why design is so important. He's not the first to suggest the importance of design, and a number of firms, such as IDEO, have been in the vanguard of the design-led forces. What Martin does well is to describe why design led thinking is important, and give examples of how to do it well.
Martin argues that all knowledge moves through three stages - a mystery, a heuristic and an algorithm. Mysteries are about discovery of new opportunities or research into solving intractable problems. Heuristics are rules of thumb that narrow the size and scope of mysteries and make them more manageable. Algorithms reduce the heuristics into repeatable processes.
This leads to two schools of thought in most businesses: exploration and exploitation, according to Martin. Most businesses are structured to exploit the algorithms, refining the way they do business and becoming highly effective and efficient, while neglecting the exploration of mysteries. Martin calls this the reliability-validity tradeoff. The vast majority of businesses want "reliability" - clearly defined processes that are easily repeatable and produce the same results. What he argues they need is more "validity" - creating the right and best outcomes through more exploration and less reliance on reliability. Three powerful forces emphasize reliability over validity: the demand for proof of the correctness of a new idea, an aversion to bias and time/resource constraints. These factors reinforce the bias toward reliability and repeatability over exploration and validity.
Once Martin has described his ideas, he then proceeds to use a few good examples to demonstrate the transition from a reliability driven organization to a validity and design driven organization. One chapter is devoted to the transition Lafley and Kotchka made at P&G, well documented in other places. Another chapter is devoted to Herman-Miller and the development of the Aeron chair. One of my favorite quotes from that chapter came from the Chairman of Herman Miller. He quizzed the design team about who they interviewed and received feedback from about the Aeron chair. When told they had not asked the sales force for feedback, the chairman said "That is right. You never ask the sales force what they think of a design. Their job is to sell it." Note that the designers spent hundreds of hours with actual customers, watching them work at their desks and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of existing seating options.
The book offers up a few more examples, ones that unfortunately have been used by others to demonstrate innovation and design, including Apple, RIM, Target and Cirque de Soleil. The weakness of many books about innovation and design is that they either have too few examples and must return to the same well, or that design thinking simply isn't widespread, so the same examples are used over and over. What's not clear is whether or not these firms are bellwethers or just happy accidents.
On the whole, this is a well-conceived and well-written book. In what could be a very esoteric topic, Martin keeps the concepts moving and introduces a lot of examples. He puts his finger on many of the challenges that those of us in the innovation and design space constantly face: too much short term thinking, too much demand for proof of an idea based on historical norms, too little time and too few resources for innovation and design.
This is a great book, and an easy read. It belongs on the desk of any executive or manager who is tasked with introducing more design thinking into an organization.
[...]
Intuitions' Role in Strategic Thinking October 12, 2009
Jim Estill
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
I start by declaring my conflict. Roger martin is a friend. I sit on the RIM board with him.
Dr. Martin is Dean of the Rotman School of Business. One of his previous books was Opposable Minds: Winning Through Integrative Thinking. The theory of that book was that the ability to hold 2 opposing thoughts in mind often lead to a third superior view. The Design of Business has some of this "opposable" view thinking.
From The Design of Business book:
"What is Design Thinking Anyway?
Design thinking, as a concept, has been slowly evolving and coalescing over the past decade. One popular definition is that design thinking means thinking as as designer would, which is about as circular as a definition can be. More concretely, Tim Brown of IDEO has written that design thinking is "a discipline that uses the designer's sensibility and methods to match people's needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity." A person or organization instilled with that discipline is constantly seeking a fruitful balance between reliability and validity, between art and science, between intuition and analytics, and between exploration and exploitation. The design-thinking organization applies the designer's most crucial tool to the problems of business. That tool is abuctive reasoning."
Dr. Martin is a big advocate of strategy. I have found that good strategy in business can make successful business almost look easy. Of course you need good tacticians to execute but it is the strategy that takes a company to the next level.
Design of Business suggests that we do not use enough intuition in business. The book advocates using intuition combined with analytical thinking to devise strategy. (The opposable - intuition and analytics can co-exist to the better good)
My experience is that people are more comfortable with neat and tidy analytics but often the more messy intuitive strategy and design works better. Successful business is a bit messy.
Martin suggests that Design Thinking can be learned, fostered and developed which is indeed a hopeful thought.
I found the book interesting because it uses RIM as an example (among others) and I am close to that one so can see exactly where Martin is saying when he says Design Thinking yields competitive advantage.
Dr. Martin argues that time bias - short term thinking (often caused by the public markets) can kill good decision making. I heartily agree. Long term thinking is key.
Good book.
In Its Niche Beyond a Six--In Larger Context a Four October 11, 2009
Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States)
4 out of 9 found this review helpful
First off, what got me to buy this book does not appear in the book at all--the author on record as saying that Wall Street was not designed to make money for its investors, only for its mandarins--the same is true of how universities are designed, businesses, etc. but that one observation really got my attention. I bought the book before BusinessWeek featured it as one of four in the October 5th edition (Europe version), and after looking the others over, chose this one.
In the larger context of changes to the Earth that now take three years instead of ten thousand years, as an entire literature flourishes on The Philosophy of Sustainable Design, Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage and Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, the book is a four for narrow-casting and lack of context, but you can use Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog, to search and sort among my other 1,400 reviews, so no penalty is warranted, This book will be scored Beyond 6 Stars at PBI/PIB for the simple reason that it addresses the core need of all eight tribes of intelligence (academia, civil society, commerce, government, law enforcement, media, military, and non-governmental organizations), to re-design away from the Industrial Era waste (where Six Sigma stops), and to instead envision how the world could and should be, and set out to achieve that--a prosperous world at peace.
I am eagerly awaiting Redesigning Society (Stanford Business Books) and consider its author, Russell Ackoff, to be the equal of Buckminster Fuller. The author of this book, Roger Martin, in my judgment, not only equal Dean Gartner and his seminal work, The Politics of Fortune: A New Agenda For Business Leaders but moves to another higher plane with all that this book sets forth. I funded the Earth Intelligence Network (EIN), a 501c3 Public Charity, after twenty years to trying to get secret intelligence communities to redesign, and this book has not only articulated all that I could not, but it is written simply enough for any bureaucrat to understand. In that sense, it joins Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace as a primer and an inspiration.
Here are my fly-leaf notes. I hope that someone close to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) will flag this for his attention, because I believe that this book not only can save the $75 billion a year tar-pit that the DNI is nominally in charge of, but that the national intelligence community, if it were led properly, could be the seed crystal for the redesign of the US Government and of the United States of America, to the lasting benefit of all humanity.
Here are my fly-leaf notes that seek to summarize this extraordinary work in terms applicable to creating a Smart Nation such as Congressman Rob Simmons (R-CT-02) and I sought to lay out in THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest
+ Design thinking is abductive thinking, neither deductive (from general to specific) nor inductive (from specific to general, the academics call this ethnocentric studies now). It seeks to employ observation and imagination to explore, to intuit, and to create "new ways."
+ Design thinking is NOT an unaffordable flight of fancy. CEOs must keep their designers connected to the triangle of envisioned needs for which no poll or survey exists; technology on the bleeding edge of innovation, AND business bottom-line common sense. The author takes great care to stress the need for blending. Design thinking is NOT an either-or proposition, but rather a HYBRID that takes best of the best to a new level.
+ The author credits James March and the knowledge funnel as being the information operations (IO) aspect of design in that writ large, design moves knowledge from mystery (climate change is an example) to heuristics (weather forecasting) to algorithms (barometers) to computer code (not there, but HAARP, High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program appears to be a nasty example). Design, in other words, is the embodiment of strategy, of IO, and ultimately of how one plans, programs, and budgets the enterprise. Heavy stuff in the most positive way!
+ Alvin Toffler called me and open source intelligence (OSINT) "the rival store" to the secret intelligence community in 1993 (in the chapter on "The Future of the Spy" in War and Anti-War: Making Sense of Today's Global Chaos and I honestly did not understand the implications until I read this book and appreciated the author's emphasis on transformation having to address structures (switch rewards and focus from legacy systems to new projects); processes (solve wicked new problems rather than repeating the same old analysis again); and cultural norms (get away from current secrets for the president and instead focus on providing decision support to every action officer in every domain at every level of government).
+ To emphasize this point: the secret intelligence community spends $75 billion a year on legacy systems that provide "at best" 4% of what a very small consumer group (no more than 100 individuals) needs--for that amount of money, I could create the World Brain with embedded EarthGame, provide free education and decision-support to every person on the planet, and in passing end poverty, assure clean water for all, and eliminate most infectious diseases. Secret sources and methods no longer yield innovation--the innovation is to be had at the other end of the telescope, the open end....and at very low cost reaching billions of end-users. THIS is the "aha experience" that this book provided to me personally.
+ The book, the author, and the concept of design thinking are HUGE on embracing the customer or user as a source of inspiration and innovation.
I've reached Amazon's word limit. More at PBI/PIB.
See also:
The Knowledge Executive
Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization
Showing reviews 1-5 of 6
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