The 3 Best Books For Anyone Learning About Business Design

If you’re an innovator driving transformation in organizations, one of your secret weapons is business design.

There aren’t tons of great books out there on the combination of design and business thinking, but I’ve found some that are extremely useful in creating new ecosystems and business value.

Here’s 3 books you should check out:

1: Design Works: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Value through Business Design by Heather M.A. Fraser

This book is a leader’s guide to driving enterprise innovation through the strategic and design-inspired practice of Business Design.

It’s well known that enterprise success requires ongoing innovation to create new value and sustain success. It requires disciplined integration of exploration, strategic decision-making, and leadership at all levels.

“Increasingly, innovation is no longer seen as a stream of activity but rather the nature of business itself. To thrive and survive, an enterprise must be continually searching for new ways to create and sustain value to the market and capture value to fuel the enterprise.”

2: Business Design Thinking and Doing by Angele M. Beausoleil

This is a textbook for innovation designers and leaders that builds on an evidence-based innovation development process.

It provides models and examples of what Business Design is, how it’s applied across industries, and its impact on decision-making and value creation. Angele has created a step-by-step reference guide to creative problem framing/solving and breaks down the innovation process, moving from initiation to implementation.

“Design has become increasingly the crucial ingredient for businesses competing for a share of today’s global, fast-paced and uncertain marketplace. Better designed products and services attract customers. Well-designed organizations attract and retain top talent. Design-driven leaders craft their companies and cultures based on the logic of design’s appeal and a designer’s approach. Welcome to Business Design.”

3: Design Thinking For Business Growth by Donika Palaj

If you’ve read The Design Thinking Playbook and The Design Thinking Toolbox, this is a great follow on read.

It offers a fresh approach to designing and scaling business models and ecosystems. Donita covers a comprehensive process for the design, development, and implementation of business ecosystems. It also includes critical design methods and tools to create a successful ecosystem.

“Design thinking applied during the phase of value creation supports the processes and helps to establish the basis for creating value in the long term by designing products, services, and processes that customers really want. Design thinking for business growth goes beyond familiar, traditional ways of looking at product models, service models, and business models. Alongside the well-known consideration of partners and suppliers, a complete system of ecosystem actors is integrated in the definition of a growth strategy and addressed with special lenses and specific questions in the context of business ecosystem design.”