Design thinking is a frustrating topic for strangers to the subject. It is not a concrete process for creating innovation; there is no instruction manual for design. You can learn to rules for research or color theory and typography, but you really only learn design by doing it. Design thinking doesn’t just require you to do things a different way it requires a new way of thinking, this is what makes it so hard to grasp, it’s a fundamental shift from the traditional mode of business thinking. Tim Brown gets over this hurdle with a lot of case studies, to put you in the mindset of doing. IDEO comes up a lot in the book. This is a source of frustration for many people but the fact is not many people do it better than the fine folks at IDEO, and showing you the thought process behind their work gives you glimpse into how they were thinking.

This book is clearly a primer on design thinking, it has a lot of information in it but requires a close read to pick it up. It may be heavy on the IDEO promotion, but again I think there is a purpose to that, revealing many insights in to the way IDEO works and thinks. So bottom line, this may not be required reading for those versed in design thinking, but it is a nice refresher. It should be required for design students if only to show them a world outside of posters, something many programs don’t do well.

Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation
by: Tim Brown
publisher: HarperBusiness (September 29, 2009)
ISBN-10: 0061766089
ISBN-13: 978-0061766084
hardcover: 272 pages

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