Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/56523
Bookshelf At Zane's Cycles of Connecticut, a customer can take a $6,000 bike out for a test drive without leav- ing behind so much as a driver's license for collateral. About five bikes are stolen annually—but 4,000 are sold, and the company makes $13 million every year from one loca- tion. Zane's has made the decision to trust its customers, says Jeanne Bliss in I Love You More Than My Dog. Choosing to believe in customers and employees is only one decision typically made by "beloved compa- nies" such as Southwest Airlines and Apple. Beloved companies also decide to act with clarity of purpose, show their quirky personalities, commit to continued relationships with custom- ers, and apologize when necessary. While those "decisions" might sound The most fashionable mantra in the business lexicon these days might be design, as illustrated by three recent publi- cations that have the word in their titles and at their hearts: Real design innovators don't study user needs and develop slightly improved products, says Roberto Verganti in Design- Driven Innovation. They consider what emotions drive a consumer's basic purchase and create a prod- uct that provides an entire- ly different experience. Ver- ganti, a professor at Politecnico di Milano, tells how the company Artemide marketed a lamp that "emitted an atmosphere created by colored light, which could be controlled and adapted according to the owner's mood and need." 56 BizEd NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2009 a little fuzzy, Bliss's examples are razor-sharp, and the dozens of brief profiles illustrating how certain com- panies embody each decision make up the heart of the book. For instance, Umpqua Bank decided to turn itself into a community-center-Internet- café-coffee-bar-bank. Zappos.com decided to make sure new hires really fit in by offering them $2,000 to leave. Other examples are just as com- pelling in this fun, fast-paced book. (Portfolio, $22.95) It's easy to love a book that opens with the story of the founding of Hot or Not, a Web site that encourages viewers to rate the attractiveness of ordinary people. But in Viral Loop, Adam L. Penenberg isn't just amusing himself with tales of 20-somethings and their voyeuristic pastimes. He's explaining Design innovators add "unsolicited meaning" that consumers don't even know they're craving—and they cre- ate products people can't live without. (Harvard Business Press, $35) In , IDEO's Tim Brown discusses how multidisciplinary teams can rethink anything from healthcare to hospitality. No matter what the project, he says, they cre- ate solutions that meet at the intersection of desir- ability, viability, and fea- sibility. He waxes poetic as he makes his case: "Design thinking relies on our ability to be intuitive, to recognize patterns, to construct ideas that have emotional meaning as well as functionality, to express our- selves in media other than words or symbols." (Harper Business, $27.99) how today's social media enable the building of million- and billion-dollar companies that require little cash and offer impossibly quick returns. Within six weeks of launch, Hot or Not was attracting 3 million page views a day; within six years, it sold for $20 mil- lion. Other companies have experienced similar trajecto- ries, and Penenberg explains why. People want to spread the word about their latest discovery, because each new user adds an exponential benefit. Facebook isn't any fun if no one else is on it; each new member opens up limit- less new connections. Penenberg, a journalist with a relaxed and engaging writing style, makes interesting points about harnessing the marketing power of viral loops. But, really, the appeal In , the University of Toronto's Roger Martin explores the stages a business goes through as it conceives of an idea, figures out how to make it work, and puts it into operation. Mar- tin presents this process as moving from a mys- tery to a heuristic to an algorithm. But once processes become too codified, businesses lose that spark of innovation. Businesses that practice "design thinking" constantly leap between stages, re-imagining products. Writes Martin, "They actively look for new data points, challenge accepted explanations, and infer possible new worlds." (Harvard Business Press, $26.95) The Design of Business Change by Design