Design a Better Business: New Tools, Skills, and Mindset for Strategy and Innovation

Patrick Van Der Pijl, Justin Lokitz, Lisa Kay Solomon, Erik van der Pluijm (Designed by), Maarten van Lieshout (Designed by)



This book stitches together a complete design journey from beginning to end in a way that you’ve likely never seen before, guiding readers (you) step-by-step in a practical way from the initial spark of an idea all the way to scaling it into a better business. Design a Better Business includes a comprehensive set of tools (over 20 total!) and skills that will help you harness opportunity from uncertainty by building the right team(s) and balancing your point of view against new findings from the outside world.

This book also features over 50 case studies and real life examples from large corporations such as ING Bank, Audi, Autodesk, and Toyota Financial Services, to small startups, incubators, and social impact organizations, providing a behind the scenes look at the best practices and pitfalls to avoid. Also included are personal insights from thought leaders such as Steve Blank on innovation, Alex Osterwalder on business models, Nancy Duarte on storytelling, and Rob Fitzpatrick on questioning, among others.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Design a better business and the double loop 08

Prepare
Prepare your team, your environment, and how you work 24

Point of View
Be a rebel, develop your vision, create design criteria 46

Understand
Understand your customer, context, and business 82

Ideate
Learn to ideate, expand your ideas, and select ideas 124

Prototype
Bring ideasto life, sketch, and make prototypes 152

Validate
Find the riskest assumption, experiment, and pivot 180

Scale
When and how to scale, Investment Readiness Level 214

Appendix
Index, the team, and acknowledgments