The new book out by A.G. Lafley and Ram Charan, "The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth with Innovation" is telling in itself. While I have not yet cracked it, Langley has a design background and internally at P&G he promotes design as a key strategy and points to it as an important ingredient in the company's recent success. The book company must have felt that using the work 'innovation' would trigger many more sales than the word design. Running around a old school hierarchal corporation talking about the virtues of design might work for the CEO, but for the rest of us we just have to be much smarter than this. Roger Martin speak of this often... learn to talk business. Understand what maters to business people... and translate. Most designers are pretty good at translating and story telling, but for some reason we bristle when it comes to doing the same for our story. Certainly there is much business can gain and learn from design. But frankly, we need them to recognize us more than they need us.
If designers aren't motivated or able to capitalize on the sweets spots of process and strategy... you can not blame those from business for recognizing those same traits and putting them to use. We have no one to blame but ourselves when our thunder is stolen. Mark On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 9:11 AM, Jared M. Spool <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Here in New England, we have a saying: > > If the glass is half full, you must be an optimist. > If the glass is half empty, well, you're probably a Kennedy. > > This feels like a half-full/half-empty kinda thing. > > On the one hand, I see where CF is coming from: The move in business > is to acknowledge there is something special about design and that it > needs to be part of business planning and strategy. Yet, there is very > little (if any) discussion about the strategic and business talents > that lay dormant amongst many designers. For those with those talents, > that's got to be very frustrating. > > On the other hand, I see a huge change in business: Design and (in > particular) experience design are now regular conversations in the > boardroom. They are definitely incomplete and flawed conversations. > But the conversations are there. And this is new -- it wasn't > happening 15, 10, or even really 5 years ago. This is good. > > Modern business has been running the way they've been running for more > than 150 years. Their structure hasn't really changed in that time. > > Over history of business, you can see periods where the corporation > awoke to new perspectives. The mass-production movement of the 40s and > 50s. The quality movement of the 70s and 80s. These are just two > examples. > > In each case, it took close to two decades for the bulk of > organizations to realize this was the only real way to remain > competitive. We're just at the start of this period for a design > movement. I expect it won't be common thinking for at least another 10 > years. > > This is good news for those folks who do understand business strategy > and design. The demand for talent at senior levels is only going to > grow. And now is the time to really get a handle on how to make the > two parts fit together. > > That's my $0.02 on the "design thinking" thingy. > > Jared > > Jared M. Spool > User Interface Engineering > 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 > e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 > http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
