Solving Problems with Design Thinking: Ten Stories of What Works (Columbia Business School Publishing)

First, this is a GREAT little book on Kindle or your Amazon cloud-- the publishers/ authors knew better than to use mice sized illustrations, formulas that get slaughtered, etc. on e-readers. The little "essence" curve diagram for design thinking, for example, (based on the more expensive and thorough previous text like books by these authors) is large, crisp, and nicely embedded in the Kindle page spread about asking the four DT "Whats" about what is, what if, what wows and what works.In the sense of Gail Fairhurst's powerful framing book ( The Power of Framing: Creating the Language of Leadership ) this little book contains illustrative stories about how the frame of "design thinking" (a combination of creativity, customer research, engineering and marketing all rolled up into a strawman "how designers think" model) make folks like Apple successful.This is where I start to differ a little with the publisher's promos. The book, in promo, comes off as a "big company" text-- how to get around the politics of managers not thinking they are creative and selling new and innovative ideas to "execs." Well, frankly, this book and frame work just as well if you're an infopreneur wearing the design, management, accounting and distribution hats on different days in a one person writing, software development, consulting, etc. company! This book is a kindof "lab" for the lectures of the author's other fine, larger texts on design thinking, as it cuts right to the chase of real world stories (also a DT technique!). Frankly, I've read all three books in the series and will opine that this one is fine to grok the whole idea.There are fads like one minute manager etc. that writers make up and become "trendy." DT could be seen in that frame, but so could the iphone, so... don't dismiss it because it DOES have elements of let's create a neologisim and hope people buy it. There are legitimate and helpful new angles/ frames whether you're a brilliant design creative framing into finance or vice versa. As an Engineer, I see fellow creatives - design engineers in my field who don't "believe" they have a creative bone in their body, yet they do what this book calls design thinking all day long.This book kicks in when you leave the most efficient design pattern in OOP and start considering the user interface. Of course the specific best of breed book in that field is Cooper ( About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design ), but this is a close second at the 30,000 foot view scale, with variety that includes a wide array of products and ideas, and tangentially, even services.For the price on Kindle, and the new frames it opens up, highly recommended.

Design thinking is one of the those things that define the future of management and business and therefore it is critical to understand and apply. This book starts out doing perhaps the best job of explaining Design Thinking in a clear and understandable way. That makes the first first 15 pages among the best I have read on the subject.The books idea to illustrate the application of design thinking in a varied set of situations is also excellent. Unfortunately this is where the book bogs down as the cases focus more of explaining what people people did in narrative form rather than showing how design thinking helped solve the problem. This leads to case chapters which make up the majority of the book that are illustrative and a bit heavy without being incisive.This makes Solving Problems with Design Thinking more of a secondary book to read rather than the place to start to understanding design thinking. I would recommend Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovationby Tim Brown as a good place to start. Also Service Design: From Insight to Implementation by Andy Polaine, Lavrans Løvlie and Ben Reason is another book that is a great place to start.

Decent set of design-thinking case studies. It suffered from a lack of metrics, meaning it would have been nice to get an idea of the impact these projects had other than, "We got people really excited and talking about X" or "Now our whole team is committed to this approach." Those are fine, but I think for design thinking to be taken more seriously by the business community, it has to at some point demonstrate its value quantitatively. I would have given five stars if the case studies included proper measurement.

Elected to pass this on to a colleague after reading it, did nto retain for my professional library.

Design thinking is something I have been thinking about for a long time, and learning how to apply it, even in my limited capacity, is thrilling. Great book, worth a read whether you’re a C-level executive or a new hire.

Through very different examples the book covers the principles of design thinking for business solutions in a simple and engagong way.

The ten case history way of reviewing Design Thinking is masterful and beautifully bridges the gap between theory and practical application. Only critique is what I expected to be the crowning case--#10 Intuit--could use a rewriting. It needs to be told as a story as are the other nine cases to better involve the reader. But that is a minor flaw and does not diminish the power of this book. It is excellent.

pleased to find a practical application of Design Thinking in the messy real world. some stylisation of problems and seems some element of artistic license in fitting results into the process but enjoyable and incredibly helpful stories.

Speaking as a degree level designer, and previously the CEO of national and international NFP orgs, I was attracted to this publication to learn more about the possible improvements to the management of social sector bodies by widening the application of my design skills.I know those to be the consecutive application of three actions ... to observe, assess and innovate ... which I have used to good effect in many aspects of my managment responsibilities and organisation development.But I found the proposals in this book to be anything that related to my experience. Instead, the value of a basically simple design approach is puffed up with the obscurity of management and marketing speak and their "look at me" jargon and gobbledygook.

Schöne Ergänzung zu manchem eher theoretischen Werk zum Design Thinking: 10 Anwendungsfälle aus der Praxis dieser agilen Methode, die neben Scrum und Kanban zu den bekanntesten im Spektrum des agilen Projektmanagements zählt.

If you are in Design Thinking then this book is meant for you.Very simple and clear to understand.The authors took care of covering an excellent angle: how to motivate readers/learners to get familiar to the principles of design thinking.I would recommend it if you are curious and interested to discover what DT can do for you.

Good book, like it already though I have completed reading only the first 3 case studies.Good book to open up your mind to possibilities with real world examples that I found easy to relate to my work.

Geniune and good quality pages. Will update on the content soon.