Design and business can no longer be thought of as distinct activities with individual goals. Design the New Business is a film dedicated to investigating how designers and businesspeople are working together in new ways to solve the wicked problems facing business today.  The short documentary examines how they are joining forces by bringing together an international collection of design service providers, education experts and businesses that have incorporated design as a part of their core approach. Design the New Business features inspiring case studies and insightful discussions, helping to illustrate the state of the relationship and how it needs to continue evolving to meet tomorrow's challenges.

change by design

Design thinking begins with skills designers have learned over many decades in their quest to match human needs with available technical resources within the practical constraints of business... Design thinking taps into capacities we all have but that are overlooked by more conventional problem-solving practices. It is not only human centered; it is deeply human in and of itself. Design thinking relies in our ability to be intuitive, to recognize patterns, to construct ideas that have emotional meaning as well as functionality, to express ourselves in media other than words or symbols.

-- from the new and very thought-provoking book by Tim Brown, Change by Design.

tim brown

Designers have perhaps been used to the idea that they design something that somebody else consumes. We have to get used to the idea that we're going to help to design something that other people will participate in.

-- Tim Brow (his interview with Debbie Millman is here)

design services made accessible

Design 99 is a storefront for new ideas, products, projects, and untapped talent.

Part retail space, part architectural design studio, Design 99 seeks to break the notion of contemporary design as expensive and inaccessible. From tricking out multi-family immigrant homes to posh downtown lofts, we approach each project with the same contemporary mindset- albeit different budgets- making contemporary architecture available to a wider public through over-the-counter design services.

Situated in the heart of Hamtramck’s commercial strip (Michigan), the Design 99 name takes a cue from the well-established 99-cent pricing strategy as well as the numerous dollar stores in the area, which are a constant source for inspiration.

issuu

I've been playing there now. Go see it big.

I think if you're starting early in the process by talking about your ideas for solutions, you're already not listening. I think you need to enter into any design project with that zen learner's mind of 'I don't know what I don't know'.

Kim Goodwin, General Manager and VP of Design at Cooper

the epitome of design thinking

"Aravind started in 1976 as an 11-bed eye clinic in an old temple-city. Today it is the largest and most productive eye care facility in the world. Taking its compassionate services to the doorstep of rural India, Aravind's stunningly effective strategies vaulted barriers of distance, poverty and ignorance to create a self-sustaining system that now treats over 1.7 million patients each year, two-thirds of them, for free."

tools vs. behaviors

Some posts come with very insightful comments as a bonus.

We need to be careful when we talk about digital media, that we don't get the tools mixed up with the behaviors. Obsessing over the significance of one site over another, or arguing the importance of participating on a site while not even considering what you're going to do when you get there or if it's even the right place, is a waste of time.

Facebook.com is not important. What's important is that more and more people are actively building and managing a personal network of relationships that can be accessed at any time via digital technology.

YouTube.com is not important. What's important is that more and more people are sharing original videos with other people all over the world at will.

Twitter.com is not important. What's important is that more and more people are developing a habit of broadcasting every experience and piece of information that they think might be of interest to their network.

As these tools evolve (and capabilities and uses merge), let's remember that the tools we use aren't as important as the behaviors they create.

Here are some excerpts of a comment left by Michael Maurillo:

What I have recently found so interesting about this (incredibly) important point is that there's a very large community in our industry that obsesses about user-behavior and how it affects their craft everyday. I'm talking about designers, YET when it comes to marketing it is something we so rarely think about. And if we do, it usually ends up in a tactic or two (if we're lucky), not in the core of the strategy.

Marketing insights have always been part of the process, but they typically only touch the surface of behavior and revolve around things like shopping habits or purchase behavior.

We all give the same reasons why "advertising is broken" based on how the user's behavior is changing, yet so many creative briefs I read still describe the "target" in terms of demographics with a smidge of pyschographics when it's more than likely that the designer down the hall from you has 5 distinct personas hung up on their wall representing the same audience. Strategists must start thinking like designers and leveraging their tools. It's not just about user-centered design, it's about user-centered marketing as well.

good design

What is good design?

This is the question that has haunted the design community for decades. Whenever the conversation comes up, the “eye of the beholder” argument shuts it down. Someone says that good design is design that “works,” and someone else adds that the arbiter of “what works” is the individual user. At this point everyone nods and the conversation ends. But the question is never fully put to rest.

I believe there’s a more universal answer. It’s this: Good design does not depend so much on the eye of the beholder, but on a combination of aesthetics and ethics. Good design is design that exhibits virtues. What virtues? You know, good old human virtues like generosity, courage, diligence, honesty, substance, clarity, curiosity, thriftiness, helpfulness, and wit. By contrast, bad design exhibits human vices like selfishness, fear, laziness, deceit, pettiness, confusion, apathy, wastefulness, harmfulness, and stupidity.

In other words, we want the same things from design that we want from our fellow humans. When we combine ethical virtues with aesthetic virtues, we get good design. The ancient Greeks framed this ideal in the context of knowing, making, and doing: “To know truth. To make beauty. To do good.” Apple’s Steve Jobs framed it this way: “Design is the soul of a man-made creation.”

Soul, like beauty, is one of those evanescent qualities that disappears under the microscope, but it’s clearly visible when you meet it on the street. It’s a quality that’s been missing in a 20th-century business tradition that overvalues narrow, short-term success, and undervalues broad, long-term success. Sumantra Ghoshal, a global business leader and author, called corporate business “under- socialized and one-dimensional.” He said that spreadsheet management has only led to resentful customers, dispirited employees, and a divided society.

Why would this change? Because it has to. In an era when customers are not only omnipotent but omniscient, when over-production leads to an ecological box canyon, a selfish focus on the bottom line is bad design. Good design, in contrast, is a new management model that deliberately includes a moral dimension. It’s a model that not only serves shareholders but employees, customers, partners, and communities. For the first time since the Industrial Age, successful businesses will be designful businesses. They’ll combine knowing, making, and doing to strive for truth, beauty, and the public good. At last, the bottom line will begin to trace the shape of who we want to be.

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From Marty Neumeier's The Designful Company.
You can download Part 2 of the book here.

the process

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on how b-schools have failed

I remember reading "M.F.A is the new M.B.A" while I was a student at Herron and today's New York Times has proved to me again that this is a great time in History to be a designer and a right brain thinker.

But with the economy in disarray and so many financial firms in free fall, analysts, and even educators themselves, are wondering if the way business students are taught may have contributed to the most serious economic crisis in decades.

“It is so obvious that something big has failed,” said Ángel Cabrera, dean of the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Ariz. “We can look the other way, but come on. The C.E.O.’s of those companies, those are people we used to brag about. We cannot say, ‘Well, it wasn’t our fault’ when there is such a systemic, widespread failure of leadership.”

(...)

“There is a need to broaden from the analytical focus of M.B.A. programs for more emphasis on skills and a sense of purpose and identity,” said David A. Garvin, a professor of business administration and one of the project’s authors.

(...)

Business education “accentuates the simple technical pieces,” said Ms. Samuelson of the Aspen Institute, and “ignores the real complexity and, frankly, the really exciting opportunities business has to be the driver of long-term prosperity.”

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MFA is the new MBA was published in 2003 by Harvard Business Review's Breatkthrough Ideas for 2004. It's available for download here or you can purchase the article here.

press start to begin new phase

"If you’re just hoping to 'get through' this year’s financial crisis, you may be missing the bigger picture. The financial crisis is merely the final score of a game we’ve been playing for over a century — it’s called Free-market Capitalism. The game is officially over, and a new game is beginning."

We're in charge of discovering a new way of doing business that exists beyond the "one wins, one loses" idea. To me, that's all very exciting. It doesn't freak me out. It moves me forward. If only more people realized that.


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identifying the strategic contributions of design thinking

"Janet Rae-Dupree wrote about design thinking in the business section of the New York Times this weekend. It is good to see the discussion about the broader role for design appearing in the mass media. The article illustrates the very gray line between the traditional role of design and the more strategic contribution that design thinking can make. It is sometimes hard to tell what happened from the physical outcomes alone which adds to the challenge when it comes to explaining what design thinking is. I find it very easy to slip toward describing what is simply good design (based on a relatively conventional brief) or what is good business using normal convergent processes. A test is perhaps whether the business (or organizational, or societal) outcome is significantly different than would have been the case if design thinking had not taken place. In other words, were new choices created not only about the product, service or experience but about the business goal itself? Did a product become a service? Did a service become an experience? Were entirely new users or markets identified? Were new to the world offerings created? These questions seem to reflect the higher bar that I believe we might expect to be the result of a broader application of the design approach."

Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, on how to identify the strategic contributions of design thinking.