Business Design MBA

If everyone else is wrong, why bother innovating? Discover why the creators of Paper for the iPad invested a year in designing a better colour picker. 

This is bad for start-ups in social media, for whom attracting investment was as easy as a one-pager on user growth and time spent per person as investors change the way that they price attention. But even more importantly, it's bad for you. Look at your smart phone or your tablet. Some of the best apps out there are free programs that bring down walls, connecting you to businesses and information that generally makes you life easier or more enjoyable, whether it's finding transportation, ordering dinner, or naming a song. Many of these companies either have no business model, or have a business model so thin as to be practically imperceptible to its users. In some corners, this is a mockable fact, but rather than mock it, you should stop and appreciate how amazing this is: Some of the smartest and most creative entrepreneurs and developers of our generation are dedicated to making awesome stuff for you, and, bankrolled by deep-pocketed venture capitalists, their determining business metric was not "How will you make money from credit cards and marketing departments?" but rather: How many millions of people are you delighting with your exceptionally cheap product? It is hard to imagine an industry built on a more satisfying premise for customers.

"People don't want gadgets any more," Bezos declared, explaining why the Kindle Fire had succeeded where other gadgety Android tablets had failed. "They want services that improve over time. They want services that improve every day, every week, and every month." This statement of purpose signals a new phase in Amazon's evolution as a company, and its singular, emerging take on the developing consumer marketplace, and how it's positioning itself towards its broad field of competitors. 

What can we proactively do now without permission--and then ask forgiveness for later?  

Bonus: As a counterpoint, consider this uninvited AA redesign.

A fascinating look into the new business of music management. 

"A great company begins as art and ends as science" -- Dan Ratner and his wife & partner Genevieve Thiers discuss how they scaled their babysitting service Sittercity nationwide in 36 months. 

Facebook is about you sharing with the world. Google Plus is about Google understanding you. See the difference? 

Will it work? 

"Businesses solve problems. So find a problem and solve it." Sounds simple enough, but there is a subtle nuance that they aren't teaching that makes all the difference: The best entrepreneurs design solutions to problems they understand better than anyone else in the world.

Designers are in danger of making big promises they can't deliver, like alchemists of old. To prevent themselves from being crucified, designers need to see themselves as a part of a broader system and apply their thinking accordingly.

A radical and much needed (?) refresh of the Microsoft brand.

Design and business can no longer be thought of as distinct activities with individual goals. Design the New Business is a film dedicated to investigating how designers and businesspeople are working together in new ways to solve the wicked problems facing business today.

Brian Gillespie of Continuum asks, will designers lose design strategy to business strategists learning design thinking?

Heather talks about Design Thinking and shares some of the strategies and tactics for embedding the practice of ‘business design’ into an enterprise, based on her work at DesignWorks.

An in-depth analysis of the primary cause of failure in startups.