Title: Design a Better Business: New Tools, Skills, and Mindset for Strategy and Innovation
Authors: Patrick Van Der Pijl, Justin Lokitz, Lisa Kay Solomon
Publication Year: 2016
Categories: Design Thinking, Competitive Strategy

“Design a Better Business” is a comprehensive guide that provides tools, skills, and a mindset necessary for creating innovative and effective business strategies. Authors Patrick Van Der Pijl, Justin Lokitz, and Lisa Kay Solomon leverage their extensive experience to present practical methods for entrepreneurs, business leaders, and strategists to design and implement better business models. The book is structured around ten key steps essential for business innovation and offers numerous tools and real-world examples to illustrate its concepts.

The initial step emphasizes the importance of understanding the environment in which a business operates. This involves analyzing market trends, customer needs, and competitive landscapes.

Action: Use the Business Model Environment Canvas to map out key external factors affecting your business.
Example: A startup planning to enter the wearable tech market uses the canvas to identify emerging trends in health monitoring, major competitors like Fitbit and Apple, and regulation impacts.

Discovering involves gathering insights through observation, interviews, and other research methods to uncover unmet needs and potential opportunities.

Action: Conduct empathy interviews with potential customers to gain deep insights into their experiences and pain points.
Example: A banking firm conducts empathy interviews with millennials to understand their aversion to traditional banking services, leading to the creation of a new app with a simplified user interface and lower fees.

This step is about defining and prioritizing the problem or opportunity you aim to address. A well-framed challenge helps guide subsequent design efforts.

Action: Develop a clear design brief that outlines the problem, opportunity, and constraints.
Example: A company working on sustainable packaging for products frames its challenge by specifying the goal to reduce environmental footprint while maintaining product integrity and customer satisfaction.

Ideation involves brainstorming a wide range of ideas, encouraging creativity and divergent thinking without immediate judgment.

Action: Host a facilitated brainstorming session using techniques like “Crazy Eights” where team members sketch eight ideas in eight minutes.
Example: An online education platform hosts a brainstorming session to explore features that can increase user engagement, resulting in ideas like live Q&A sessions, interactive quizzes, and gamified learning paths.

Prototyping is about creating tangible representations of ideas to test and learn from them quickly and cheaply.

Action: Develop low-fidelity prototypes such as sketches, wireframes, or mockups to visualize your ideas.
Example: A retail company prototypes different store layouts using cardboard and sticky notes to better understand customer flow and identify the most effective arrangement.

Validation involves testing prototypes with real users to gather feedback and validate assumptions. This step helps refine ideas and ensure they meet user needs.

Action: Set up user testing sessions to gather direct feedback on prototypes.
Example: A software company conducts user testing with a small group of customers on its new feature and iterates based on feedback, allowing them to identify usability issues early.

Once an idea has been validated, the next step is to scale it up. This involves planning and implementing strategies to bring the product or service to a larger market.

Action: Create a detailed go-to-market strategy outlining all necessary steps to scale the solution.
Example: A food delivery startup validates its service in a small city and then scales up by forming partnerships with major restaurant chains, expanding marketing efforts, and securing additional funding.

This key step involves designing a robust business model that outlines how the company creates, delivers, and captures value.

Action: Use the Business Model Canvas to map out components such as value propositions, customer segments, revenue streams, and key partnerships.
Example: An electric vehicle manufacturer designs a business model using the canvas, focusing on unique value propositions like home charging solutions, partnerships with charging station providers, and subscription-based revenue models.

Effective storytelling is essential for communicating your vision and inspiring stakeholders. This step emphasizes crafting compelling narratives around your business ideas.

Action: Develop a pitch that clearly communicates the problem, solution, market opportunity, and business model.
Example: An entrepreneur preparing for an investor pitch uses storytelling strategies to present her vision for a social enterprise that employs local artisans, highlighting the social impact alongside financial projections.

The final step focuses on cultivating a culture that supports continuous innovation and adaptability within an organization.

Action: Implement regular innovation workshops and encourage cross-functional teams to foster a culture of experimentation.
Example: A tech company establishes an internal “innovation lab” where employees from different departments collaborate on new ideas and have the autonomy to experiment, leading to groundbreaking products like a new AI-driven customer service tool.

The book introduces several powerful tools and techniques that support the ten steps:
– Business Model Canvas: A strategic management template for developing new or documenting existing business models.
– Value Proposition Canvas: A tool that helps ensure a product or service is positioned around fulfilling customer needs and wants.
– Customer Journey Map: A visualization of the process a customer goes through to achieve a goal with your product or service.
– Empathy Map: A collaborative tool to gain deeper insights into customers.
– SWOT Analysis: Identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats related to business competition or project planning.

“Design a Better Business” is a robust manual for anyone looking to innovate and stay competitive in today’s fast-paced business environment. By following the ten key steps—Understanding Context, Discovering, Framing the Challenge, Ideating, Prototyping, Validating, Scaling, Business Model Generation, Storytelling, and Designing a Transformational Culture—business leaders can create sustainable, impactful, and customer-centered solutions. Through practical actions and real-world examples, the book equips readers with the necessary tools and mindset to continually evolve their business strategies.