EDITOR Alex Wright [e-mail]

The authors stumble a bit in the closing chapters, when they try to translate their laudable vision into concrete steps that managers might take to institute design thinking at their companies. They dispense buzzwords (“Awareness,” “Commitment,” “Implementation”), slogans (“Design or die”) and—the worst offense—a recursive acronym: FOCUS (focus, long term, authentic, vigilant, original, and repeatable). Many readers may find themselves rolling their eyes at such pop management mantras. That complaint aside, the bulk of the book is well written and the central thesis effectively argued. Readers will come away with plenty of evidence to support the authors’ contention that great products alone do not make for a great company.

Perhaps the first company to prove that point was Eastman Kodak, whose 1886 one-button camera (“We do the rest”) suggests a model of prod-uct-service integration that makes it the spiritual ancestor of the iPod. The Kodak story provides an apt starting point for Subject to Change, written by four members of San Francisco user experience consultancy Adaptive Path. Like Brunner and Stewart, they argue that in order to succeed in a rapidly changing marketplace, companies must move beyond the limiting perspective of one-off product design and explore ways of creating more integrated customer experiences.

While Apple has long since become the design world’s most over-used case study, the authors do manage to find something new to say about the iPod. Digging past the conventional wisdom that attributes iPod mania to the simplicity of its industrial design, and arguing instead that its success really hinges on the chain of services that surround it: such as, the thread of experiences tying the iPod together with i Tunes and the Apple Store, effectively integrating what Brunner and Stewart call the customer-experi-ence supply chain.

Just as Brunner and Stewart’s book weighs disproportionately toward Apple, Subject to Change features a heavy dose of Adaptive Path clients. But the authors do manage to turn up a number of other stories that support their contention that companies can succeed by building more nimble design cultures. These range from the predictable, like Flickr and Apple, to the pleasantly surprising, like the Mayo Clinic’s SPARC program for medical-service innovation.

Do You Matter?
How Great Design Will Make
People Love Your Company
Robert Brunner and
Stewart Emery with Russ Hall
Pearson, 2009 / $24.99

The Designful Company:
How to Build a Culture of
Nonstop Innovation
Marty Neumeier
New Riders, 2009 / $24.99

Subject to Change: Creating Great Products and Services for an Uncertain World Peter Merholz, Brandon Schauer, David Verba, and Todd Wilkens O’Reilly, 2008 / $24.99