Designing for Growth: A Design Thinking Tool Kit for Managers

Designing for Growth: A Design Thinking Tool Kit for Managers by Jeanne Liedtka and Tim Oglivie (List Price: $29.95; 2011 Columbia Business School Publishing).

My expectations for this book were quite high -- I wanted the promised thinking tool kit for managers in a fun-to-read package as advertised in the book title.

I was a little disappointed. It is a good read, and the authors did a nice job of making the book visually compelling. I was disappointed in the depth of the content though. The authors presented what I felt was a very surface-level explanation of the design process. The primary "tool" was a phased approach to design that separated creativity from concept development from sales pitch: not exactly a revolutionary design strategy.

I am struggling a little bit with the question "who would I recommend the book to?" It is generally well-written, and the illustrative stories are also kind of interesting. In all fairness, some of the organizing outlines are also useful. However, it is too surface-level to be useful to an expert audience, and it won't really help novice designers grow in expertise.

This book could be useful as a group read. For example, I could imagine a professional design group reading this book together (like a book discussion group) as a way to explore their own thoughts about the design process. For most everyone else, I would not recommend this volume.

Click here to get a copy.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Society of Professional Hispanic Engineers Lean Six Sigma Workshop

Key Performance Indicators in a Nutshell

Priming the Project Pump: Lean Six Sigma on a Shoestring