Book Review: Change by Design by Tim Brown

I was lucky enough to get a pre-release copy of Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation by IDEO CEO Tim Brown through the Amazon Vine program….and I’m glad I did.

If you take a look at some of the Pre-release copy reviews of this book on Amazon you’ll see a few folks bashing the book because it doesn’t tell the reader much Design or Design Thinking and spends much of its time promoting IDEO.

I disagree wholeheartedly with those comments.

While this book does promote IDEO’s rich history and successes, the book does a great deal to introduce the concept of Design Thinking to the reader. If you’re a long-time practitioner of design thinking, this book may not be for you…if you aren’t, this book is perfect.

What is Design Thinking?

Comparing Design to Design Thinking, Brown provides the following definition:

The evolution from Design to Design Thinking is the story of eveolution from the creation of products to the analysis of the relationship between people and products, and from there to the relationship between people and people.

Great stuff.  I love Design Thinking…I think I’ve been a design thinker my whole life.

Another passage that helps to describe/define Design Thinking is:

The mission of design thinking is to translate observations into insights and insights into products and services that will improve lives.

Design thinking is the interplay of people and product/process.   When you use a design thinking approach you take the entire environment into consideration when designing a process or product.  Rather than take a look at a few possibilities for a design of a bike (in the case of the Shimano bike story in the book) and build a bike, the design thinker looks at the broader picture and environment to few new choices and possibilities.

If you have an interest in Design Thinking or just want to know more about the topic, get this book now.  If you’re an academic who wants to see case studies of design thinking in action that show success and failure, perhaps this isn’t the book for you.

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