Design Is How It Works: How the Smartest Companies Turn Products into Icons

"In an era of globalization when traditional product advantages are commoditized in a heartbeat, design thinking provides one of the brightest hopes for creating sustainable competitive advantage not by pasting it on but by building it in. Designs in this new era must be thoughtful, respectful, and deeply communal, and Jay Greene's book shows us all by example how these things can come to be. Design is not just how it works---it is going to be how we work. Read this book to see your future."---Geoffrey Moore, author of Crossing the Chasm and Dealing with Darwin

"Everybody agrees that design is crucial, but just how a company builds functional, beautiful, desirable products has been a mystery. Now, Jay Greene has finally explained how it works. In a series of smart, revealing case studies, we learn not only how great design is done, but why it matters."---Steven Levy, author of Hackers, The Perfect Thing, and Searching for Google

"Design is a global creative discipline, a kind of industrial art. If only more companies could learn to open their doors to human creativity the way the ones in this book have, we could transform the world. Greene makes it clear how."---Alberto Alessi, President and Director of Marketing Strategies and Design Management at Alessi s.p.a.

"Jay Greene gets to the heart of the matter. Design is not just about how things look, it is about how they work. Follow his fascinating journey through some of the world's most significant design-led companies, and learn how they have made design central to their endeavors. Design is How it Works offers ideas and inspiration to anyone seeking to build a business that makes a difference."---Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO and author of Change by Design

There's a new race in business to embrace "design thinking." Yet most executives have no clue what to make of the recent buzz about design. It's rarely the subject of business retreats. It's not easily measurable. To many, design is simply a crapshoot.

Jay Greene shows how important it is to build a culture in which design is more than an after-the-fact concern---it's part of your company's DNA. Design matters at every stage of the process. It isn't easy, and it increases costs, but it also boosts profits, sometimes to a massive extent. In an increasingly competitive marketplace, design represents the best chance you have of transcending your competitors.

Drawing on interviews with top executives such as Virgin's Richard Branson and Nike's Mark Parker, Greene illuminates the methods of companies that rely on design to stand out in their industries. From the experiences of those at companies from Porsche to REI to LEGO, we learn that design isn't merely about style and form. The heart of design is rethinking the way products and services work for customers in real life. Greene explains how

Jay Greene, former Seattle bureau chief for BusinessWeek and an award-winning journalist, has written about business and technology for more than two decades. He has also written for the Seattle Times, the Orange Country Register, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and Variety. He lives in Seattle.