Reads

Design thinking from BW

Business Week has long been a strong advocate for elevating design thinking within organizations, and I’ve collected up a few recent examples here. I constantly preach to my clients and students that design is more than mere styling, and that it is instead a part of a holistic process that incorporates the expertise of many disciplines into a cohesive statement. These Business Week articles are prime examples of this kind of thinking. Enjoy!

Why Design Matters
The Role of Design in Business
The Value of Design
The Value of Design to Startups

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The Creative Priority

The Creative Priority : Putting Innovation to Work in Your Business
by Jerry Hirshberg

I found the tone of this book unnecessarily haughty, and felt constantly that Mr. Hirshberg has something to prove in writing it. This is less a book on practical innovation itself than a self-congratulatory career retrospective on the part of the author. It is clear that Hirshberg is intelligent and creative, and not at all afraid to tell you so.

Despite it all, the book is full of interesting facts and stories from the inside of Nissan’s innovation design center in California. Not a must-read, but worth a skim.

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful (Hardcover)
by Marshall Goldsmith, and Mark Reiter

My boss at Bose, Gustavo Fontana, recommended this book to me after delivering a somewhat stinging–but wholly justified–performance review. The title is telling: the strengths that have helped me to succeed thus far in my career will not carry me any further. It will not be my hand-skills or CAD know-how that will advance my career henseforth; it will have to be my people skills and political savvy. Anyone who knows me, knows that I have neither.

Much like Paco Underhill’s book, this is a very practical and helpful book, written in case-studies from the vantage point of a corporate executive “coach” working with Fortune 500 corporate leaders in various disciplines. It is definitely a shameless self-promotion on the part of Mr. Goldsmith, but a powerfully helpful one none-the-less.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and plan to read it again soon. I hope to go through it with my wife–the ultimate expert on all things “Adam”–in hopes that she can help me apply it in the real world. Highly recommended!

The Wal-Mart Effect

The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World’s Most Powerful Company Really Works–and How It’s Transforming the American Economy
by Charles Fishman

I grew up shopping at Wal-Mart, and during my time at Black & Decker, I witnessed the copany in action from a whole new perspective.

I was hesitant to read this book. I fully expected it to be a raving anti-capitalist memorandum on the “fat cats” in “big business” laying seige to decency itself. I was proved wrong. The beginning of the book is an insightful look into the humble beginnings of Wal-Mart, and it’s ernest and unwaivering efforts to live up to its mission: “Always low prices. Always.”

The picture becomes less rosy as the book wears on, though it is consistently emphasized that the “Wal-Mart Effect” is complex and nuanced, and not wholly negative.

I have a good friend who has done market research consulting work for Wal-Mart in recent months, and who has also read “The Wal-Mart Effect.” He believes that the book is already out of date, as many of the issues brought to bear in the book have changed significantly since its publishing. This may be the case, but the book speaks to an issue larger than Sam Walton’s retail machine. With only a handful of notable exceptions, Wal-Mart plays by the rules. And yet they seem to have somehow defeated the rules as they exist today. I am never an advocate of special restrictions on businesses of a certain size; I believe that all businesses, small and large, should play by the same rules. But that said, how can we ensure that the big-boxes, and Wally-World in particular, have enough competition to keep markets free and fair?

I highly recommend this book. It is eye-opening, and never one-dimensional. It is concisely written, and never presumptuous. This is not a book about the author or the author’s outlook, but on Wal-Mart and its many various implications for American capitalist society.

Why We Buy

Why We Buy: The Science Of Shopping
by Paco Underhill

Chock-full of fascinating details about the behaviors of shoppers in situ. While clearly a book of shameless self-promotion for Mr. Underhill, he certainly does a good job of it! After reading this book, one is left with far more questions than answers, and an inexorable desire to sit in a shopping mall parking lot for hours on end. Paco Underhill is an academic researcher turned retail marketing guru, by painstakingly perusing through tens-of-thousands of hours of candid footage from in an attempt to glean every possible measurable characteristic about the actual behavior of shoppers. The result is astonishing.

In my opinion, the book does contain a bit too much in the way of opinion and conjecture. Though Underhill does an excellent job of convincing the reader that he is a credible source of information, the last three chapters of the book seem to reach further and further from actual analysis of behavior, and focus instead on his various ideas for practical applications in various industries. While these too are fascinating, they lack some of the impact of the more direct cause-effect relationships demonstrated by the research in earlier chapters of the book.

This book is a pleasure to read, and a quick one at that. Underhill is engaging and enthusiastic. He is a man who loves his job, and it shows. I’ve found it motivating and inspirational, and highly recommend it!