Designing for Growth

Jeanne 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.

• Section I: The Why and How of Design Thinking
• Why Design?
• Four Questions, Ten Tools
• Section II: What is?
• Visualization
• Journey Mapping
• Value Chain Analysis
• Mind Mapping
• Section III: What if?
• Brainstorming
• Concept Development
• Section IV. What wows?
• Assumption Testing
• Rapid Prototyping
• Section V. What works?
• Customer Co-Creation
• Learning Launch
• Section VI: Leading Growth and Innovation in Your Organization
• Appendix
• The Project Management Aids
• The CNVC's List of Universal Human Needs
• Further Reading

What bullshitting! This is a book devoid of any real content and which tries to paint the "Design" school as separate and superior from the "MBA" Product Research and Management. According to these morons, any "MBA" would never dream of doing Market Research (aka, talk to prospective customers, etc). It seems written to fuel the the egos of the supposed "Design" school versus the rest of the world that doesn't understand their superiority… Even though there is in reality nothing new said in this book.

Anyway, not everything is bad (except the design of the book itself, of course), but there is little to be learned here, which can't be learned from other sources (like any decent MBA-program or any decent book on marketing) without the condescending tone. Recommendation: skip it, you'll only get irritated.