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Coaching & Mentoring Search Coaching & Mentoring Coaching & MentoringDesign-Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean (Pocket Mentor)
Harvard Business School Press Search Harvard Business School Press by Roberto Verganti Search Roberto Verganti
Customer Reviews:
Hits the nail on the head, meaning, what it is, how to innovate it.
Very good book on innovating in the culture space, showing how this isn't optional for radical change.
For anyone who wants to understand how to innovate in immeasurables that motivate consumers, the right brain stuff that business has found it hard to interact with. We're well into the experience age, now the challenge is to build on that by acknowledging the cultural context of everything.
It's largely targeted at traditional senior business types and attempts to shift the mindset away from technology innovation alone and towards meaning innovation being the driver, and highlights how this comes from cultural cues/discourse etc. It shows how radical innovation takes cultural leadership (meaning leadership), something a step on from user-centerdness.
There is a lot of affinity with what Verganti covers and the discipline of Semiotics although he doesn't mention it by name.
Two strong strands in the 'how' are building relational networks with culture leaders, 'interpreters', and how all business people are 'people' and therefore have their own cultural standpoint from which to enter the design discourse.
A very timely book on how to get there (design driven innovation) from here (traditional business practice).
How to make the innovation process more innovative
Does design drive innovation or does innovation drive design. The answer is "Yes." The success of each approach depends almost entirely on what Roberto Verganti characterizes as "radical research" and those who either conduct it or support those who do. In his introductory Letter to the Reader, Verganti explains that this is a book on management. More specifically, "it's about how to manage innovation that customers do not expect but eventually love. It shows how executives can realize an innovation strategy that leads to products and services that have a radical new meaning: those that convey a completely new reason for customers to buy them. Their meanings are so distinct from those that dominate the market that they might take people by surprise, but they are so inevitable that they convert people and make them passionate." Or what Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba describe as "customer evangelists."
Verganti calls this strategy "design-driven innovation" because design, in its etymological sense, means "making sense of things." Therefore, think of design-driven innovation as the R&D process for meanings. This book shows "how companies can manage this process to radically overturn dominant meanings in an industry before their competitors so and therefore rule the competitors." Throughout his lively narrative, Verganti responds to questions such as these:
1. How to innovate by making sense of things?
2. How to integrate design-driven innovation with an organization's strategy?
3. How to initiative and then sustain productive interplay between "technology-push" and design-driven innovation?
4. Why do some companies invest in design-driven innovation and others don't?
Note: Verganti's comments in response to this question will be of great value to readers now determining whether or not design-driven innovation is appropriate to their organization's needs, objectives, and resources.
5. What are "interpreters" and what is their role in the design-driven innovation process?
6. How to locate and then attract key interpreters?
7. How can an organization develop its own vision?
8. How to leverage the "seductive power" of the interpreters?
9. When establishing what Verganti calls the "Design-Driven Lab," where to begin?
10. What is the "key role" of an organization's senior managers and their influence on the organization's culture?
However those involved are identified (e.g. "interpreters") and their functions are defined, whatever a given organization's goals and resources may be, questions such as these suggest critically important issues that must be addressed by its business leaders. If I understand Verganti's core thesis, it is that the process by which to do that must itself be design-driven. That is to say, a competitive advantage can be achieved and then sustained only by innovative thinking about innovation. Only then can those who are involved "make sense" of what to do and how to do it for their customers.
Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Mark Gottfredson and Herman Saenz's The Breakthrough Imperative: How the Best Managers Get Outstanding Results, Dean R. Spitzer's Transforming Performance Measurement: Rethinking the Way We Measure and Drive Organizational Success, and Enterprise Architecture as Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution co-authored by Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, and David Robertson. HR Transformation: Building Human Resources From the Outside In co-authored by Dave Ulrich, Justin Allen, Wayne Brockbank, Jon Younger, and Mark Nyman.
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Design-Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean (Pocket Mentor) & More...
related blog:
Design Driven Innovation ( Roberto Verganti)
I would also suggest subscribing to the Harvard Business Ideacast on Itunes. Enjoy! Mp3 Link; http://thecustomercollective.com/TCC/39203. Amazon book link; http://www.amazon.com/Design-Driven-Innovation-Competition-Innovating/dp/1422124827.
http://briankraz.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/design-driven-innovation-roberto-verganti/
