UNCERTAINTY:
YOUR SECRET WEAPON

The world around you - and your business - is filled with uncertainty. But within that uncertainty exist innumerable opportunities to design (or redesign) game-changing businesses. These opportunities are there for the taking, if you know how to look for them.

The world has changed. Not only are consumer habits, technologies, and other trends uprooting once-thriving businesses, entire markets are shifting and emerging out of the uncertainty and unpredictable nature of today's network economy. Interestingly (and infuriatingly to some), many of the companies leading the charge - and the change - did not exist two decades ago. It's not that these new players are just lucky or employ smarter, more capable people. So, how is it that they've found gold in some of the most unlikely places? In a word: design.

Design is fundamentally about enhancing the way you look at the world. It's a learnable, repeatable, disciplined process that anyone can use to create unique and qualified value. Design is not about throwing away the processes and tools you have. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Just as design has enabled countless upstarts to create new business models and markets, design will also help you decide when to use what tools in order to learn something new, persuade others to take a different course, and at the end of the day, make better (business) decisions.

Most of all, design is about creating the conditions by which businesses thrive, grow, and evolve in the face of uncertainty and change. As such, better businesses are ones that approach problems in a new, systematic way, focusing more on doing rather than on planning and prediction. Better businesses marry design and strategy to harness opportunity in order to drive growth and change in a world that is uncertain and unpredictable.

This book will provide you with new tools, skills, and a mindset to harness opportunities born of uncertainty in order to design a better business. We've included tons of real-world examples of people who have mastered the fundamentals of design, as well as case studies of companies that have created change using design as the underlying foundation for decision making. And, just as design is a repeatable process, this book is meant not only to guide you on your design journey, but also to provide an ongoing reference to help you scale the design beyond one project or product to an entire company.

YOU'VE GOT EVERYTHING TO GAIN

BECOME A
DESIGNER

WHAT'S ALL THIS (DESIGN) BUZZ ABOUT

Design is quickly becoming one of those words like "innovation." It has different meanings to different people. It can be a noun, an adjective, and a verb. Design is ultimately an empowering approach of looking at the world and igniting new possibilities to make it better.

Design is both a process and a mindset. It's an intentional set of practices to unlock new, sustainable value from change and uncertainty. It allows individuals and organizations to be more flexible and resilient in the face of constant change. Unfortunately, the flip side of design is where we often find ourselves: scrambling when unforeseen change happens to us.

WITH GREAT POWER . . .

The good news is that you are already a designer, at least some of the time. Every time you intentionally develop strategy or make a decision based on insight, you are acting as a designer. The not-so-good news is that many of the tools that you have probably been using to help make those decisions are likely not as useful as they once were, at least not on their own. So, what do designers do and what tools do they use that help them make better decisions?

ITERATION

The key to design - and design tools - is that it is an iterative process by which designers, like you, start with a point of view, go out and observe the world to inform that point of view, create options that may address the opportunities you see, validate those options, and execute the ones that best address the opportunities. Most important, designers never focus on simply scaling the execution of the chosen option. Design is continuous and iterative; it's built to deal with ambiguity and change in a long-term way.

DESIGN IS A DISCIPLINED APPROACH TO SEARCHING, IDENTIFYING, AND CAPTURING VALUE.

DESIGNER: A REBEL WITH A CAUSE

THE 7 ESSENTIAL SKILLS

IT ALL STARTS WITH THE CUSTOMER.

Observing customers to understand them will give you fresh insights into their needs. You must ask the right questions to get the answers you seek.

THINK AND WORK VISUALLY!

Working visually helps you to see the bigger picture, gain clarity on complex topics, create a visual anchor for your strategic conversations, and engage with your audience.

DON'T FLY SOLO. YOU ARE NOT SMARTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE.

Gather different insights by working together. Connecting the brains in the room and in your market will enable you to uncover hidden opportunities.

TELL STORIES AND SHARE THE EXPERIENCE.

Stories have a clear beginning and end, and most likely they have heroes your audience can connect with. Cool stories stick. Cool stories will be told by others. Cool stories spread.

KEEP IT SIMPLE.

Just start. Don't try to build the final product. Don't add features that don't solve real problems.

SET UP SMALL EXPERIMENTS AND LEARN SHIT.

Every little iteration and trial will net tons of useful new insights - things you wouldn't have learned if you just started building. Reality is different than what you assume.

EMBRACE UNCERTAINTY. IT'S CANDY FOR THE BRAIN.

Except for change, there is no such thing as certainty in business. Accept this and harness opportunities from uncertainty.

DESIGN A BETTER BUSINESS

CONNECTING INNOVATION, BUSINESS, AND STRATEGY

So, now you're a designer who's been imbued with the goal of designing a better business. What does a better business look like? And, how would one go about designing a better business?

Many existing, established businesses, especially non-startup businesses, focus solely on getting products to market while reducing costs and increasing margins. In these businesses, strategy is executed in a linear way: prepare; execute. What's often missing in this story is the customer on the other side of the transaction, as well as the person designing and developing products and services to satisfy some need for the customer.

POINT OF VIEW P46

Designers, on the other hand, are always thinking about the customer. They approach people and problems from a particular perspective, one informed by design-specific tools like ideation, prototyping, and validation. They use human-centered tools, skills, and a mindset to search for, design, and execute new value propositions and business models based on what they've learned. Designers do this continually, iterating constantly to uncover opportunities within the fog of uncertainty.

In this book, you'll find the designer's journey represented in a new way. Your point of view is at the center of the design process, which is always influenced and informed through understanding, ideation, prototyping, and validation. This process is iterative and cyclical.

So, what's a better business? A better business is one that puts the person at the center and connects design tools, practices, and processes.

UNDERSTAND P82

IDEATE P124

PROTOTYPE P152

VALIDATE P180

There's a continuous search for new customers, value propositions, and business models - with business execution and scale. As a designer, it's your job to make this connection. It's your job to consider and test new options for business sustainability and growth (by design). It's your job to consider the person you're designing for, which will inform your own unique point of view.

To do this you must employ a design rigor - using your new tools, skills, and mindset - to guide business decisions and outcomes rather than solely driving day-to-day (business as usual) execution.

In doing so, your options for the future will become much clearer; as a designer, you will unequivocally begin to see opportunities within the fog of uncertainty.

THE DOUBLE LOOP

A DESIGN JOURNEY

The double loop is founded on a simple observation: every project, product, company, change, or idea starts with a point of view. It might be based on fact. It might be based on assumptions. Whatever your point of view, using it to create lasting change requires work and a movement toward the goal line.

The double loop takes your point of view into account, while adding rigor and continuity to the design process. This means that your point of view is always informed by understanding and that that understanding will spark new ideas, further enhancing your point of view. These ideas are prototyped and validated to test and measure their effectiveness. This, in turn, further informs your point of view and enables you to execute your ideas successfully.

Every design journey also has a beginning...