The Design of Business

Interesting book about how business strategists need to get away the emphasis on analytical business thinking and move to design centric thinking. Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Business at U of T writes:

"Most companies today have innovation envy. They yearn to come up with a game-changing innovation like Apple’s iPod, or create an entirely new category like Facebook. Many make genuine efforts to be innovative-they spend on R&D, bring in creative designers, hire innovation consultants. But they get disappointing results. Why? In The Design of Business, Roger Martin offers a compelling and provocative answer: we rely far too exclusively on analytical thinking, which merely refines current knowledge, producing small improvements to the status quo.To innovate and win, companies need design thinking. This form of thinking is rooted in how knowledge advances from one stage to another-from mystery (something we can’t explain) to heuristic (a rule of thumb that guides us toward solution) to algorithm (a predictable formula for producing an answer)."

I was commenting a few weeks back on Blue Ocean Strategy, and how despite it being a breakthrough strategy book, it would largely be underutilized because the people who are tasked to read and implement it are too analysis driven to make the leaps of faith necessary to make great products and services that make the competition irrelevant. Roger Martin's book supports my argument. Roger is a leading strategic thinker, it will be interesting to see if his book makes any waves.

http://rogerlmartin.com/library/books/the-design-of-business/