Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation: What They Can't Teach You at Business or Design School Hardcover – August 12, 2013

As a neophyte in the the world of design consultation I found this book pleasing in every sense. Mootee has created an inspiring and informative learning experience that tied many of the loose threads that were dangling with my understanding of the application of design thinking to the real world. This is a must read for design students entrepreneurs.

Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation explores the application of design thinking principles to re-energize and evolve the practice of business strategy. This is a good book that offers some provocative ideas and re-grounds standard strategy terms in a the new digital-media rich world. Traditional strategists will enjoy the book as it takes a different look at the idea of strategy and how it applies in a dynamic world. Design thinking personnel will find it provides a bridge to more traditional business - although this is by no means a rosetta stone.The book is a good example of the blending of traditional business writing, with imagery and design. The book is more of a media unit featuring photographs taken by the author to illustrate and engage in new ways of thinking. Textually, the book is sparse with the text taking a back seat to the images. That will be off putting to some used to reading 300 page texts, but I suggest that you engage this book more than you read and extract from it.The book covers familiar ground about the changing nature of business, trust, the need to be better -- not just faster or cheaper and how design thinking applies to this. The book is organized into 5 'scenes' ala sections with mini-chapters in between. The best 'scene' is Scene 04 - Introducing the Design Thinking MBA. This section compares and contrasts the design thinking approach around the following business challenges:GrowthPredictabilityChangeMaintaining RelevanceExtreme CompetitionStandardizationCreative CultureStrategy and OrganizationsHard core students of strategy will find the treatment of these topics semi-suprficial, but they will miss the point. The idea of exploring these business challenges is to provoke you think differently about them as you are exposed to design thinking and points of view.Mootee, the author, backs up this discussion with a section that starts at Page 170 -- Applied Design Thinking for Business Model Design. This is a set of templates that help you see how design thinking creates, captures, organizes and thinks through the issue of business design. It is the toolset that is so often missing from other books.Overall recommended as an engaging, insightful and provocative read. Why only 4 stars then? Well Mootee is the CEO of his own design company and the book really concentrates largely on what his company does. In that regard the book is like a portfolio of work/advertising for his firm rather than advancing the state of either strategy or design thinking.

Idris Mootee has moved business management and design one step further in this ground breaking book. He presents the case for creating value in a business through design thinking very well. The illustration and layout in the book provide an engaging coverage of the topic.

I picked up this book because of its beautiful design, and also because I own a small business and value strategy, but am not familiar with "design thinking" and hoped this would be a good primer. The subtitle, "what they can't teach you at business or design school," gave me hope that it would be a high-level introduction to a new topic.Well, it is high-level, perhaps to a fault. My impression is that it's written for executives or managers rather than practitioners, and deals primarily with the "why" (the benefits of "design thinking") with some emphasis on the "what" (a sometimes-clear exploration of what design thinking actually is, though I was still a bit fuzzy at the end of the book), and very little about the "how."My disappointment with the book is probably a case of audience mismatch. I'm a mix of in-the-trenches practitioner and small biz owner, so I'm looking first and foremost for practical applications of interesting ideas. This book celebrates the ideas themselves, and as a result (and due to the formal writing style), I had a hard time staying focused on the content. I would have appreciated more concrete examples (there were some, but they were few and far between).But speaking of the content: it is beautiful. The design of the book is fantastic, and left me feeling happier about the effort of reading the text. Lovely as the design is, though, I wish I found the writing as delightful.

Although I first though it was from the guys from IDEO, Idris give a good argument and explanation on their methodolgy. Really good book an very easy to read. Love it.

An absolutely perfect book about design thinking --- no answers, all inquiry leaving you with the inspiration to create and think... Loved it and can't wait to read it again.

This book is utter crap! It's just a series of business buzzwords strung together without actually saying anything. It would be generous to say it's all theory and no details, as I don't think there's actually any theory, just some blather that's supposed to sound impressive. The author includes no examples and never explains how to actually achieve the amazing results he brags about. If anything, this book is just a really extended brochure for Mootee's consulting firm -- but again, without ever saying anything of substance. Avoid at all costs.