Design Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean,   ISBN:9781422124826

Customer Rating: 

I have had some problems with the delivery of the item because it was completely soaked. I guess it has been only an incident.
About the book, I found it very nice and particular, I think it shows a new meaning about design and how it can lead innovation. For an engineering, like me, I think it refers to something less standard and more connect with creativity. Today, like the book explains, managers can not concentrate their efforts in innovation without thinking about new meanings, that not necessarily they are new needs.

Read it and tell me your opinions.

Customer Rating: 

If you want to be a real game changer and were highly disappointed by the homonymous book; and yet, if you are not a designer, but are eager to find out how design allows a breakthrough technology to disrupt an industry, then this book is certainly for you!

Professor Verganti takes you on an intriguing and never-want-to-stop reading that will introduce you to a new type of innovation...neither technology push nor market pull: it is what the brilliant author refers to as Design Driven Innovation, and through which you can create new meanings.

The book is very well articulated in two sections: the former focuses on products - taken from the Italian furniture landscape, the entertainment world, the watch and automotive industry, that Prof. Verganti uses as examples to get the reader familiar to this new concept of innovation. The latter, instead, becomes more theoretical as the author explains the Design Driven Innovation framework that will allow you to:

-Create a new meaning in the industry thus defining new rules of the game
-Overturn the competition with a sustainable advantage
-Create products with clear personality that stand apart
-Translate the uniqueness of the offering in higher profit margin per unit and product longevity
-Set new socio cultural models

The takeaway message is that, unfortunately, not anybody is suitable for implementing this type of innovation: you need to be bold, have a forward looking attitude and, more important, love the risk. Good luck with that!

Customer Rating: 

Although occasionally repetitive, this book is an eye opener. There is a sub-text in the market that companies fail to read...what clients literally ask for is often a symptom but not what they really need. This book attempts to explain how companies can develop resources and talent networks to better interpret the full context of client demand. It shows that when companies focus exclusively on linear processes it's almost impossible to create a sustainable competitive advantage since these are easily observable and replicated by a competitor. True innovation anticipates market demand, and it comes from developing both internal and external teams that allow senior executives (who must be fully engaged) to see and act on emerging trends before others. The author's key point is that this creates a company culture that drives sustainable growth and success that is always one step ahead.

Customer Rating: 

It's easy to win the game if you're writing the rules. "Design-Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean" is a guide to dominating a market through pushing innovation to the point where you create your own unique market, apart from the separate. Using models such as Apple's iPod, which changed the way music was listened to or other radical changes that earned companies millions just by offering something new and unique. "Design-Driven Innovation" is a must for any business who values evolution in their company.

Customer Rating: 

While we are seeing a rise in books which acknowledge the role that design plays in innovation, Verganti's book is a reminder that well-structured, entrenched design-driven innovation processes have been in place for many years. Verganti uses a number of examples from northern Italy to illustrate his well-considered and usefully described method for discovering 'meaning' in products and services.

The difference between this and any other book on design and innovation (that I've come across in the past 15 years) is that Verganti provides a practical, easy to understand method which can be applied and tested in other environments. So unlike many books which continue to mystify the 'design process', Verganti proposes that the structure that is built around identifying and developing the problem is central to achieving innovative outcomes.

Where the method seems to fall short is in the way in which it engages audiences. The creation of meaning is, for the most part, undertaken, reviewed and assessed by interpreters. These interpreters are those engaged in a design discourse. The method doesn't extend to engaging audiences through social networking,something which is on the rise in the design sector.

The strength of Verganti's method is that it calls for identifying interpreters and engaging in a discourse around design. If this method, (which seems to be the key to success in Italian innovation)encourages designers to become more active in their engagement with discourse, then it will have done what few design and innovation books could do.