Tim Brown, Change by design: how design thinking transforms organizations and inspires innovation (2009)

Abstract

As for business leaders, ‘Change by Design’ could be considered as a reference book written by a designer; therefore, it is important to answer the question of ‘why should I read a book from Tim Brown to transform my organization?’ Yes, Tim Brown is a successful industrial designer with numerous design awards. However, his special interest is the integration of thinking skills of designers into all aspects of business, yet he frequently speaks about the value of design thinking and innovation to business people and designers around the world. Tim Brown, as the CEO and the president of IDEO (an important design and innovation company based in Palo Alto), advises senior executives and boards of Fortuna 100 companies and has led strategic client relationship with such corporations as Microsoft, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, and Steelcase. He published other studies in this relation such as "We should design businesses like circles, not straight lines," in 2017 and "Design for Action," in 2015 in Harvard Business Review. Although the author refers to many relevant academic studies from different domains such as phycology, sociology, business, engineering; the book, rather than being an academic work, is a persuasive type of writing, in which Tim Brown, with respect to his experience both as a designer and also a business consultant, tries to convince his reader about the change maker effect of Design Thinking for a company. For this purpose he uses many success stories, anecdotes about business interactions of his company IDEO and its well know clients. The reader learns what solutions IDEO reached by implementing Design Thinking, which might indeed make him/her perceive design thinking a luxury or complicated process since all companies in the showcases have big teams of designers and big budgets to be able to collaborate with IDEO. Throughout the book the author emphasizes the importance of visual thinking for expressing ideas, on the contrary the book consists of almost no visuals. However, both the design and also the language used in the book, without heavy business jargon, make it easy to read and understand for the reader.