A Fine Line: How Design Strategies are Shaping the Future of Business [Hardcover]

Throughout the years since 1969 when Hartmut Esslinger founded frog design (one of the world's leading strategic design firms), having learned firsthand how truly great business leaders partner with designers, he has developed "a step-by-step innovation process that leverages the power of that partnership. That process is at the heart of the collaborative model of innovation-driven business design that [he's] outlined in this book."

First, Esslinger examines "the role of design in the rapidly developing creative economy and how savvy business leaders cultivate a culture of innovation within their organizations." Next, Esslinger "walks" his reader through a step-by-step view of the innovation process, "from targeting goals to successfully shepherding innovations to market," and then takes an "in-depth look at the tools of innovation and the sometimes counterintuitive process of following a highly technical path to arrive at an intensely human experience." Then in the book's final chapters, Esslinger takes "a long look" at the future of manufacturing and how business can transform the "cheap, cheaper, toxic" model of production outsourcing "into one of mutually beneficial and economic collaboration."

I wholly agree with Esslinger that creativity is the new major driver and a multi-million dollar segment of the new economic order. Also, that "design is the means by which companies can apply creativity strategically to their business purpose." I also agree that only business strategies based on creativity, insight, and cultural awareness can produce benefits that result in "human- adaptive solutions and not in commodity like products for which nobody is willing to pay full price - especially when the offerings outnumber the buyer...Only strategies that explore and take risks - those that are willing to surprise and inspire on the human scale - can hope to win in our evolving economy." It is imperative that designers understand the business context within which every organization struggles to compete successfully; it is imperative, meanwhile, that executives understand the role that designers must play "in the process of infusing any business with the energy of design-driven innovation." Esslinger draws upon a wealth of real-world experience when suggesting how creative minds and business minds can collaborate effectively, how both sides of what he characterizes as a "business-design partnership" can process within the process they share.

Readers will appreciate Esslinger's brilliant insights in combination with practice advice with regard to taking full advantage if them, as when he reveals and discusses "the four frog principles (Page 41), when he examines the three-step process by which a company can become an "engine of innovation" (Pages 57-71), when he examines the four-step process for ecologizing industrial production in today's globally networked environment (Pages 86-92), when he explains how to implement the ecological load factor (ELF) rating system and overcome the challenges of "going green" (Pages 94- 109), and when reviewing the benefits and advantages of open-source design that can be produced by professional collaboration on a global scale (Pages 119-128). Esslinger concludes with a compelling affirmation of faith that designers, executives, and consumers "are ready to be mobilized as never before through our understanding of the need for change.... As we prepare to enter this vast, new world of creativity in business, science, and industry, our mastery of today's `already here' challenges can guide us as we make `tomorrow' a productive and humanistic adventure. Welcome to the journey." Indeed, it has already begun.

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Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out two books by Roger Martin, Opposable Mind: Winning Through Integrative Thinking and The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage as well as Howard Gardner's Five Minds for the Future, Tim Brown's Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation, Roberto Verganti's Design Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean, and two books by Thomas Kelley, The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm and The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO's Strategies for Defeating the Devil's Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization, both co-authored with Jonathan Littman.

A major, positive surprise. I have read most books on design and strategy, but few people can describe the practicalities of design and business like Hartmut Esslinger. Its personally engaging, full of facts and case studies. Anybody remotely invovled in design strategy definitely should read it.