It is important to understand that no matter what business you decide to do, self-education is very important. No university professor can teach you what you read in books written by people who have already achieved success in the field in which you want to work. Therefore, everyone who wants to start their own business just needs to read a few books on business thinking.
Literature for the development of business thinking
After reading these books, you will begin to better understand entrepreneurship:
- "Rich dad, poor dad".
Robert Kiyosaki
In this work, the author talks about a real story from his life. Robert's father was a civil servant, he earned good money, but did not want to work for himself, or somehow develop further. The author called him poor dad. And the rich dad was the father of Kiyosaki's friend. He was engaged in business, and, as a result, managed to become one of the wealthiest people in the Hawaiian Islands. It was from him that the author took an example. The book is about the difference in thinking of two completely different “popes”. - "Think and get rich". Napoleon Hill
Although the title of the book suggests that in it you will find tips on how to become rich, this is not entirely true. There is much more to this piece. After reading it, you will understand how to achieve success in different directions. The book is one of the top six business bestsellers according to the magazine.BusinessWeek.
- “Who stole my cheese.” Spencer Johnson
This work is very short, it can be read in just half an hour. The main idea that the author wants to convey to readers is that you need to change, otherwise you will not be able to survive, especially in business. Many company owners buy dozens of copies of the book and give it to their employees so that they can learn how to adapt to different situations.
- “From good to great. Why some companies make breakthroughs and others don't." Jim Collins
Before starting to write this book, the author studied the work and development path of about 1.5 thousand different companies. After reading this work, you will learn what you need to do to achieve success in business, as well as what you definitely should not do.
- “The mindset of a strategist. The art of business in Japanese.” Kenichi Ohmae
This work is not only full of practical advice on strategic thinking, but it can also provide you with a boost of motivation to work for a long time. In his book, the author explains how a company can achieve success, how to plan work correctly, and how business thinking processes should go.
- "Brain. Quick guide. Everything you need to know to increase productivity and reduce stress." Jack Lewis and Adrian Webster
After reading this book, you will understand how our brain works and how we can improve our thinking and performance. The work contains several simple rules that will help you become more productive at work.
- “Effective leader.”
Peter Drucker
In his book, the author talks about how in order to skillfully lead others, you first need to learn to manage yourself. This work contains several rules that will help improve the performance of both the manager himself and his subordinates. You will also learn why knowledge and imagination will not bring success unless they are complemented by effective action.
- "Game theory. The Art of Strategic Thinking in Business and Life." Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalbuff
This book will help you learn strategic thinking, for example, predicting a competitor's next move. You will also realize that by studying game theory, you will be able to discard various patterns and begin to work more efficiently.
All of these are good because they were written by people who have already managed to achieve success in business, so their advice is especially valuable for all entrepreneurs and develops entrepreneurial flair and business thinking.
Tim Brown is the president of IDEO, one of the world's most successful design companies (in particular, its specialists designed a computer mouse for Apple, a children's toothbrush for Oral-B, and a tube for Crest toothpaste). According to Tim Brown, design thinking is a necessary quality for a modern manager and entrepreneur; without understanding the philosophy of design in business, it will be difficult to achieve real success. With the permission of the SmartReading service, we are publishing a summary - a “condensed” version - of Tim Brown’s bestseller “Design Thinking in Business”.
SmartReading is a project by the co-founder of one of the leading Russian publishing houses of business literature, Mann, Ivanov and Ferber, Mikhail Ivanov and his partners. SmartReading produces so-called summaries - texts that concisely present the key ideas of best-selling books in the non-fiction genre. Thus, people who for some reason cannot quickly read the full versions of books can get acquainted with their main ideas and theses. SmartReading uses a subscription business model in its work.
Introduction: What is Design Thinking
Thanks to technology, millions of people have lifted themselves out of poverty, and a significant part of humanity has begun to live better. However, the Industrial Revolution had more than just a positive impact on people's lives: clouds of smoke changed the climate, a flood of cheap goods led to excessive consumption and the production of incredible amounts of waste, and the industrialization of agriculture caused natural and man-made disasters.
Today we need innovative products that balance the needs of individuals and society as a whole, as well as ideas to improve health, education and living standards.
Design thinking is the use of design tools by people who are far from design to solve a wide range of problems
Design thinking is based primarily on intuition, the ability to recognize patterns of behavior and create ideas that carry not only a functional, but also an emotional load. Unfortunately, few of us take the risk of creating a business relying on feelings, intuition and inspiration, but in the modern world even a completely rational business has little chance of success.
The most progressive companies choose the third way - the integration of emotions and calculations: designers do not just “decorate” the finished product, but take an active part in its development.
The principles of design thinking are applicable in a variety of areas: from treating childhood obesity to crime prevention, from the rocket industry to climate change. Design thinking is no longer limited to the creation of new tangible products, but extends to various processes and services, as well as interaction, communication and collaboration.
The shift from design-doing to design-thinking reflects an awareness of the incredible design possibilities that are too compelling to be exploited by designers alone. The evolution of design making to design thinking is a movement from creating a product to analyzing the relationships between people and products and interpersonal relationships.
1. Who are design thinkers
Unlike proponents of scientific management, design thinkers know that there is no one right path to a goal. Wherever they find themselves, they become initiators of innovation.
1.1. Innovation
When creating something innovative, pay attention to the starting point and any signs along the way. Innovation itself is at the intersection of three cycles:
- inspiration- what motivates the search for solutions and opportunities;
- idea creation- the process of generating, developing and testing ideas;
- application- the path from the office to the market.
Projects optimize ideas and explore new directions. The iterative, non-linear nature of the project is explained by the exploratory nature of design thinking, and not by poor discipline and lack of organization. At first glance, the iterative approach threatens to delay the process. In fact, it's just the opposite: a team that is not bound by strict time constraints turns out to be more productive.
Predictability leads to boredom, and boredom leads to the loss of talented team members and results that are easily copied by competitors. In addition, history knows many cases when projects managed by traditional methods were delayed for months and even years. Proactive design thinkers don't face such delays: they produce prototypes from day one and improve them regularly. As they say at IDEO, “whoever fails first will succeed faster.”
Design thinking is based on a positive attitude toward competitive constraints. At the first stage of the design process, it is important to identify significant constraints and evaluate them. Constraints are best considered based on three criteria for successful ideas:
- feasibility- how functional is the idea;
- viability- can the idea become part of a business model;
- expediency- Does the idea have meaning and value for people?
An experienced designer can overcome each of these constraints, and a design thinker can balance them.
The popular video game console Nintendo Wii is an excellent example of balancing feasibility, viability and feasibility. Nintendo realized early on that it could shift the focus away from on-screen graphics and developed gesture control technology, which reduced production costs and increased profits many times over.
Design thinkers do not solve individual problems, but deal with the project as a whole. A project is the driving force that leads an idea from inception to implementation. Design thinking creates a natural time frame that provides discipline and makes it possible to see progress, make changes at any stage and change direction. Thus, clarity, direction and project boundaries help maintain a consistently high level of creative energy.
Google and bicycle manufacturer Specialized have teamed up to create the "Invent a New Bike or Die" design challenge. The goal of the competition was to use bicycle technology to change the world. After weeks of brainstorming and prototyping, the winning team decided on a focus: More than 1 billion people in developing countries lack access to clean drinking water. The questions discussed were: mobile or landline? trailer or trunk? As a result, a working prototype was created, which was called the aquadact. These tricycles, which filter water during transport, now travel around the world, supplying remote areas with clean water. The secret to the success of this invention lies in clear limitations (pedal technology), development budget ($0) and specific deadlines.
1.2. Preparation
A successful project is a carefully prepared project. The main elements of the preparatory stage: creating a brief, selecting team members and providing a creative workspace for this team.
Any project begins with a brief that specifies possible constraints, criteria for measuring progress, goals to be achieved, budget, available technologies, market niche, etc. The art of creating a brief helps raise the bar and differentiates great companies from ordinary ones.
The complexity of modern projects forces designers to unite in teams. Thus, several dozen designers work on a car model, and hundreds of architects work on each new building. Moreover, designers often have to collaborate with psychologists, business experts, writers and directors. Job openings constantly appear in creative teams, the requirements for which include the ability to interact at the intersection of disciplines. This skill distinguishes representatives of interdisciplinary teams from workers in multidisciplinary teams, where each specialist does his own specific job.
A design thinker might be an architect with a degree in psychology, an artist with an MBA, or an engineer with a background in marketing. In a multidisciplinary team, everyone defends their professional point of view, which becomes the cause of ongoing disputes.
In an interdisciplinary team, ideas are collective property and everyone is responsible for them.
For the entire period of the project, the team must be assigned a special space for conducting experiments and iterations. Project sites must be large enough to accommodate all research materials, photographs, plans, data and prototypes. The visual accessibility of all materials facilitates the identification of models and stimulates creative synthesis.
A well-organized workspace maintains communication between team members, even if one of them is absent, significantly increases team productivity due to close interaction between employees, and improves communication with clients and partners.
1.3. Transforming need into necessity
For a design thinker, there is no right or wrong behavior; all behavior has a meaning. His job is to understand what people want and give it to them.
Recognizing the real needs of people is very difficult, because people are very creative in adapting to any inconvenience: they sit on seat belts, write PIN codes on their arms, hang jackets on door handles and tie their bicycles to park benches. Henry Ford said: “If I had asked customers what they wanted, they would have answered: “a faster horse.”
This is why traditional methods such as focus groups and surveys, which simply ask “What do you want?” do not provide unique information. The real art of design thinkers lies in their ability to help people express hidden needs that they may not be aware of. This can only be achieved by focusing on the three mutually reinforcing elements of a successful design program: insight, observation and empathy.
Insight- this is a way out of the office into the outside world and a careful study of people's behavior in everyday life. It is unconscious actions that provide invaluable clues about what people really need.
A patient and attentive observer will notice that a store owner puts a hammer under a door to keep it from slamming in the wind, and an office worker puts colorful stickers on wires under his desk.
Observation- the ability to see what people don't do and hear what they don't talk about. Moreover, observing ordinary people will not provide any new information. Instead of studying the habits of customers at the center of a market niche, you need to find special users who live differently, think differently and consume differently from everyone else. A collector with 1,400 different Barbie dolls or a professional car thief can inspire unique ideas.
A few years ago, the Swiss company Zyliss was working on a new collection of kitchen tools. To begin with, the team studied two “polar” consumer groups: children and professional chefs. Thus, a seven-year-old girl who could not cope with a can opener came up with the idea of optimizing physical control, and the life hacks of the chef, observed during his work, gave rise to the idea of models that would be easy to wash. The result was a hugely successful line of products that shared a common design but had specific handle designs for each tool.
Empathy- this is “trying on someone else’s shoes,” that is, the ability to perceive the people around you not as laboratory mice and let their feelings, expectations and thoughts pass through you. First you need to realize that certain subtle elements of people's behavior are ways of dealing with the complex and contradictory world in which they live. The mission of design thinkers is to be able to transform their observations into valuable information, and information into products and services that change lives.
Tim Mott and Larry Tesler, who developed the graphical interface for Xerox PARC in the 1970s, proposed the desktop metaphor. This image, familiar to every potential user, helped transform the computer from a distant, complex and highly scientific technology into a tool that could be used in the office and even at home.
1.4. Experiments
The creative team must have room, time and budget for mistakes. True design thinkers are open to exploring new directions and ideas.
In the 1960s, Chuck House, an ambitious young engineer at Hewlett-Packard, broke corporate rules and created a secret laboratory to develop large-format cathode ray tube screens. The result of this illegal project was the first commercially successful graphic display, which was subsequently used to broadcast Neil Armstrong's "walk" on the moon and in many other areas.
However, excessive risk is rarely worth it. Much better results come from a balance of experimentation from below and coordination from above. The following rules ensure the development of creativity among staff and can be applied in almost any field:
- The best ideas come when the entire ecosystem of an organization, not just designers and engineers, has room to experiment.
- Team members exposed to a changing environment (new technologies, changing customer base, strategic opportunities) are the most motivated employees.
- Ideas need to be evaluated without taking into account the credentials of their creators.
- Ideas that can “make a lot of noise” are the most promising.
- Top management's gardening skills help nurture ideas, shape them, and reap rich harvests.
- Goals must be clearly stated so that employees have a clear sense of direction and are free to innovate rather than constantly asking management for clarification and permission.
1.5. Prototyping
Prototyping requires only as much time, effort, and money as is required to promote the idea and receive feedback. The more expensive and complex a product is, the more complete it seems and the less likely it is that the creators will want to hear constructive criticism. At the same time, information about the strengths and weaknesses of the model helps identify new directions for creating more complex prototypes. Nonphysical prototyping involves creating scenarios and stories that describe potential future situations or states using words or pictures.
To begin with, you can come up with a character that corresponds to a certain set of demographic factors, for example: a divorced working woman with a higher education, two small children... Then a scenario is created for this character to use online pharmacies, taking into account her daily activities, preferences and needs.
Scripts are also valuable because they allow you to place a person at the center of an idea. This will prevent developers from getting too deep into technical or aesthetic details. The most effective way to motivate early prototyping is to set a goal to make the first prototype by the end of the first week or even the first day of work. There should be many prototypes during the project, they should appear quickly and at first they should be imperfect, even ugly.
1.6. Experience Design
The modern economy is an economy of impressions: people want not just to consume, but to take part in the process. Customers are becoming more sophisticated and picky, so the experiences they are willing to purchase must be original and of high quality. To meet the needs of modern customers, you need to remember the following rules:
A good idea is not enough. Everything is important: product quality, attractive packaging, creative and reliable delivery, original marketing, realistic price and much more. Your product is actually good if it is remembered and discussed.
For people to want to try something new, there must be some elements that are familiar to them..
In 2004, leading cycling equipment manufacturer Shimano invited IDEO to participate in a joint project to expand its market niche in the United States. To begin, the interdisciplinary team set out to find out why 90% of Americans don't ride bicycles, even though 90% of them rode bicycles as children. It turned out that most adults have happy memories of childhood bike rides, but they are afraid to start riding again due to negative shopping experiences, difficulty in handling and the high cost of both the bike itself and its maintenance. Thus, a huge new market has emerged.
The design team created a new bike with a comfortable padded seat, straight handlebars and run-flat tires based on an old Schwinn touring bike. The new model did not require maintenance, and braking was carried out in the old way: by turning the pedals back. Within a year of the successful launch of the new model, 10 manufacturers also released new models of simple touring bikes.
2. Business transformation
Organizations today face dual challenges: how to teach strategic thinking to designers who are master problem solvers, and how to engage others in design thinking. Business thinking is a component of design thinking, and any design solution benefits from the use of analytical tools.
Product companies and brand management firms (Procter & Gamble, Apple, Hewlett Packard) already have designers and even design thinkers on staff. In manufacturing and service companies, it is much more difficult to convince management of the strategic role of design and the need to change the internal culture of the company.
In 2003, Kaiser Permanente, a healthcare provider, decided to improve customer and employee satisfaction. Representatives of IDEO proposed not to involve external designers, but to train company personnel in the principles of design thinking. A series of workshops with doctors, nurses and administrators resulted in several innovative projects. One of them, a project to change the way information was transferred between nurses' shifts, was implemented at all four Kaiser hospitals. The working group determined that the main problem was that communication to nurses on the next shift about the status of patients was haphazard. As a result, some information was lost, and patients and nurses were disappointed. After several days of brainstorming, prototyping, role-playing, and filming, we decided to change the location of the shift change. Now nurses exchanged information not in the nursing room, but in the patient's room, so that the patient could participate in the process and the information was fully transmitted.
Design thinking has already become a popular trend. Many university MBA programs now include the theory and practice of innovation, and more and more graduates from these programs are confronted with problems that require design thinking.
Some business schools have students working on design projects: Haas Business School at Berkeley, the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. California College of the Arts in San Francisco says that "the MFA is the new MBA" and offers an MBA in Strategic Design program.
3. Design your life
Design skills can be applied to a wide variety of problems because they are more accessible to the general public than is commonly believed. The unifying, complex skills of a design thinker are useful in business, public and private life.
3.1. Design Thinking and Organizations
Companies benefit from inviting design thinkers to their boards of directors and involving them in developing their marketing strategy. Design thinking integrates and balances users, technology and business. Design thinkers observe people's behavior and see how their life experiences influence the perception of products and services. Along with the functionality of things, they take into account the emotional response they evoke in people.
The art of asking the right questions largely determines the success of a new product.
Does it meet the needs of the target audience? Does it carry a semantic load along with material value? Does he create a new model that is associated only with this product?
When starting a new business, entrepreneurs often make the following mistakes: focusing entirely on either the business side (marketing budget, purchasing, sales, etc.) or on the technology. The first tactic leads to the creation of a product that is easy to copy, the second often entails huge investments and the creation of a product that is not in demand. Only by making people our number one priority can we invent something special and find the right market for it. The following tips will help you successfully apply design thinking to your business.
The sooner and more often you make mistakes, the better.. Leaders must encourage experimentation because mistakes are normal if they happen early and become a source of useful information. Design thinking culture involves creating cheap and quick rough prototypes. Even if the prototype has been approved by the team, it is necessary to present it to potential users.
The prototype must be testable, but not necessarily physical: Stories, pictures, scripts, films and even improvised plays can become successful prototypes.
Contact the professionals. Sometimes you need to look beyond your organization to expand your innovation ecosystem.
Share your inspiration. Share your thoughts, knowledge, and emotions with your colleagues. This has a positive effect on efficiency. The Internet provides a lot of opportunities to bring people together. Personal communication is an organization's most valuable resource, and efforts must be made to keep it productive and creative.
Don't let bureaucracy slow down innovation. Design thinking is a fast, frenetic and revolutionary process. Don't kill it with bureaucratic procedures and complex financial reports.
Look for talent anytime, anywhere. There are design thinkers in every organization, but you need to find them, help them open up and give them creative freedom. Look at your colleagues. Who is ready to listen to clients for hours? Who makes prototypes rather than writing long reports? Who looks at the world differently? These people are a real treasure.
3.2. Design Thinking and You
How nice it is to give the world something new: a piece of industrial design, a beautiful solution to a mathematical problem, or a poem for the school newspaper. The feeling of self-fulfillment is a powerful driving force.
Ask: “Why?” Doubt is an opportunity to reframe the problem, identify limitations, and find a more innovative solution. Instead of immediately accepting difficulties and limitations, ask yourself: am I solving the right problem? Do we need faster cars or better transportation? TV with better effects or more entertainment?
At first, your endless “whys” will irritate your colleagues, but in the long run it will help direct energy to solving the right problems. There is nothing more frustrating than giving the right answer to the wrong question.
Keep your eyes open. Throughout our lives, we do not notice important things, especially in familiar surroundings. Good design thinkers are observant. Great design thinkers find ideas and inspiration in ordinary things. If we learn to pay attention to familiar phenomena and objects, great insights await us.
At least once a day, stop and reflect on a normal situation. Look at the thing or action from the perspective of a detective at a crime scene. Why are manhole covers round? Why is my son wearing this strange hat today? How would I feel if I were colorblind?
Create visual images. Draw sketches in a notebook or take pictures of surveillance objects on your phone.
Use other people's ideas. If an idea belongs to one person, it will soon disappear. If it spreads across countries and continents, taking different forms, it will live and flourish! Jazz musicians and improvisational actors create new forms based on works previously created by their colleagues.
Look for opportunities. Don't stop with the first idea that comes to mind, don't be satisfied with the only solution to the problem. Finding new opportunities takes time and sometimes complicates life, but this is the only way creative and original solutions emerge. Your colleagues may be frustrated and your clients may be impatient, but in the end they will be happy to get great results. However, you should not ignore deadlines: the art of stopping on time cannot be taught, but it can be learned.
Collect a portfolio. It’s good when the results of the work of design thinkers are tangible. Shoot videos, store sketches and pictures, and be sure to find a place to store physical prototypes. Collected in a portfolio, these materials will reflect not only your personal growth, but also the impact of your work on people (this is necessary for performance evaluations, interviews, or to explain to children the essence of your work).
Become the designer of your life. You can plan your life, go with the flow, or become a designer of your life. Designers work within the limitations created by nature and try to emulate it with elegance, economy and efficiency. Imagine life as a prototype. It is given to us to experiment, make discoveries and change focus. Turn processes into projects, find joy in creativity, and measure the success of ideas not by the amount in your bank account, but by their impact on the world.
