Designing for Growth

anecdotes and guidelines, yet avoids the drudgery of an academic methodology, by design. -- R. Lemuel Lasher, CSC, president, Global Business Solutions Group (GBS), and chief innovation officer It's time to demystify design and safely place design thinking alongside other tools used by successful practicing managers. As the authors so rightly conclude, 'Find a leader of innovation... and he or she has likely been practicing design thinking all along.' Add the stories and tools found in Designing for Growth (a very compelling read) to your leadership kit to insure innovation and organization renewal become part of your leadership portfolio. -- Stanley S. Gryskiewicz, founder and board chair, Association for Managers of Innovation, and senior fellow, Center for Creative Leadership This book slices through the design thinking fog to provide practical ways to use design methods to generate value for your organization. -- Ryan Armbruster, vice president of innovation, UnitedHealth Group The most powerful message in this book is its underlying premise: that business is ultimately a social activity performed by humans. With that framework, the authors build a compelling case for user empathy to improve ROI, and they deliver the tools to get you started. -- Greg Littleton, COO, Smart Design Jeanne Liedtka and Tim Ogilvie wonderfully illuminate the kind of thinking that twenty-first-century organizations need to solve problems, innovate, and grow. And they give managers a wealth of hands-on tips and tools they can put to work right away. Penetrating insight, practical applications--a terrific combination. -- David Wickenden, executive vice president and senior partner, Fleishman-Hillard This isn't a book of answers. It is a book of questions, of how to choose the best ones, and how to get customers and partners to answer them. That's the crux of design thinking. The simple organizing framework--What is? What if? What wows? What works?--is my new mantra for innovation and growth. -- Mark Stein, managing director, Kaiser Associates, and author of Successful Onboarding: Strategies to Unlock Hidden Value Within Your Organization This is an eye-opening book that will reveal the action-based approach to design thinking, the series of inaccurate assumptions made in most business thinking, and how to become better at recognizing around opportunities that exist within not only our core business, but other avenues as well.800-CEO-Read 800-CEO-Read 6/23/11 [This] book is rich with information on each tool, taking you through the elements clearly and crisply. If design thinking intrigues you, this would be a good place to start. -- Harvey Schachter Globe & Mail 9/7/11 Anyone wishing to get up to speed on design thinking by actually test-driving the methodology on their own will find great value in this tutorial-in-a-book -- Matthew May AMEX OPEN Forum 6/28/11