Two Words, One Answer.
competitive
 Plumbest B02-024 Competitive Basket Strainer, Black $18.64 From the Manufacturer Black competitive basket strainer. Attaches with a locknut and is simple to install. Easy to operate and maintain. Durable finish that will not crack or peel.  The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage $26.95 Every few years I run into a book that I want to give out to many people. The most recent candidates for this have been Peter Drucker's How to Manage Oneself and Cradle-to-Cradle Design by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. Roger Martin's new book one is another. I plan to buy copies for all three of my children, for the CEOs of companies I have shares in, and additional copies to scatter amongst my staff at LeveragePoint. This book is that good. I also hope it will direct people to another of Roger Martin's books, The Opposable Mind. Why does this book matter? It provides a simple way of thinking through the flow of innovation from Mystery through Heuristics to Algorithms in an organization. It then looks at the role of understanding the why (validity) as well as the what (reliability). The stories from companies as varied as McDonalds and P&G to Hermann-Miller, Research in Motion and Cirque de Soleil are fascinating and informative and give a real business context to the general model. The lateral move to include Charles Sanders Pierce and abductive logic is a creative blend (and I use the term in the technical sense of Mark Turner) that is an important piece of design thinking in its own right. I believe that Martin is correct, only companies that embrace design thinking as a core capability have any hope of long-term sustainability and competitive advantage. What he is proposing is an alternative and ultimately powerful solution to Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma. Some will argue that the book is shallow and that it fails to uncover the essentials of design thinking. This is true, but the book is intended to motivate people to think more deeply about the role of design in business and not to be a primer on design thinking itself. In any case, design thinking is a nascent discipline and it is hard to point to anyone book that really unfolds its power. Candidates would be Bill Buxton's Sketching User Experiences, John Maeda's Simplicity and the book from Bruce Mau's great exhibition Massive Change. People who need to go deeper, anyone engaged in design writ large, will need to read widely and engage in many passionate discussions. My own essential texts on design thinking include various works from the Adolf Loos, the Bauhaus crowd, Baldwin & Clark's Design Rules, Stuart Kaufmann's The Origins of Order, Christopher Alexander's Pattern Language and of course Edward Tufte's books beginning with The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. I am also working to broaden my thinking by bringing in other cultural traditions (Japan and Russia for example have deep design traditions) and disciplines (especially architecture, urban planning and software engineering). More important than reading books, though, is to develop the habit of observing how things are designed and used in the world and uncovering the choices (often unconscious) that the designers made. One way to do this is through conversations, and one place these conversations are taking place is on the Design Thinking group at LinkedIn.  Not Soap, Radio Bathing with sharks (for that competitive edge in work and/or play) bath/shower gel 12.17-Ounce $15.00 The concept: Seven bubble baths/shower gels that addresses and offers guidance to modern frustrations. Each one addresses a specific problem (stress, relationships, dieting¸¢Ä) of everyday life, in an amusing, laugh-through-it way that can actually help boost the psyche, empower, relax, or revive. The formula: Rich and incredibly emollient, just a small amount of product (less than two capfuls) will yield a virtual tower of suds. Seriously. At 12.17 fl. oz., this product will last a longer than most relationships. The vibrant colors have been selected specifically to soothe, empower, reinforce... The fragrances are strong enough to linger in the bathroom, yet subtle enough, post-bath, to not interfere with a favorite scented lotion or perfume. |
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