Change By Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation

Today I final­ly fin­ished read­ing Tim Brown’s Change by Design, after start­ing the book at the end of April and tak­ing a long break. I was too dis­tract­ed by my future plans— fig­ur­ing out where I would be mov­ing this fall and how I would get there— so I just put the book aside.

I’m glad I wait­ed to fin­ish this book until now, when I am here in Savan­nah about to begin my class­es. I start­ed over from the begin­ning and was able to retain more infor­ma­tion the sec­ond time around. It is also excit­ing to know I will start learn­ing more about design think­ing this week and will start on my path to a more reward­ing career. It is no longer a dream or a far off plan. It is a process that begins now.

As I was fin­ish­ing the book, I found these excerpts from the last cou­ple pages very inspir­ing:

“Above all, think of life as a pro­to­type. We can con­duct exper­i­ments, make dis­cov­er­ies, and change our per­spec­tives. We can look for oppor­tu­ni­ties to turn process­es into projects that have tan­gi­ble out­comes. We can learn how to take joy in the things we cre­ate whether they take the form of a fleet­ing expe­ri­ence or an heir­loom that will last for gen­er­a­tions. We can learn that reward comes in cre­ation and re-cre­ation, not just in the con­sump­tion of the world around us. Active par­tic­i­pa­tion in the process of cre­ation is our right and our priv­i­lege. We can learn to mea­sure the suc­cess of our ideas not by our bank accounts but by their impact on the world.

The great thinkers to whom I am so deeply indebt­ed are not as they appear in the cof­fee-table books about the ‘pio­neers,’ ‘mas­ters,’ and ‘icons’ of mod­ern design. They were not min­i­mal­ist, eso­teric mem­bers of design’s elite priest­hood, and they did not wear black turtle­necks. They were cre­ative inno­va­tors who could bridge the chasm between think­ing and doing because they were pas­sion­ate­ly com­mit­ted to the goal of a bet­ter life and a bet­ter world around them. Today we have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to take their exam­ple and unleash the pow­er of design think­ing as a means of explor­ing new pos­si­bil­i­ties, cre­at­ing new choic­es, and bring­ing new solu­tions to the world. In the process we may find that we have made our soci­eties health­i­er, our busi­ness­es more prof­itable, and our own lives rich­er, more impact­ful, more mean­ing­ful.”

This is what I hope for in my own life.