Design Driven Innovation - Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean

One of the Design Primers for Businesspeople. Eschewing the received wisdom that the customer is always right, Politecnico di Milano professor Verganti focuses on game-changing designs that up-end expectations and create entirely new markets... Verganti also includes a useful section on how executives can attempt to instigate their own programs of radical innovation. One of the Best Innovation and Design Books of 2009. - BusinessWeek, December 16, 2009

How should a company devise new meanings and create the designs to embody them? Mr. Verganti suggests that companies form relationships with "interpreters"—individuals and organizations looking at settings similar to the one in which the company's products would be used. For Mr. Verganti, it might be said, if life imitates art, corporate life should imitate the making of art. - The Wall Street Journal, October 9, 2009

If you follow Mr. Verganti’s advice, it may take a while, but your competition will be left wondering how it was you managed to redefine (and capture) their business”. - San Francisco Book Review, September 2009

Verganti … tells how design innovators add “unsolicited meaning” that consumers don’t even know they’re craving – and they create products people can’t live without. - BiZed, November-December 2009

One of the best books of the year is undoubtedly “Design-Driven Innovation”. In it Verganti attacks one of the central mysteries of innovation–how can a company successfully create a product that is a radical break from the past, and which shows the way to a new future? - John Caddell on The Customer Collective, August 12th 2009

Consumption-driven wealth and status are being replaced by identity, belonging, and a strong desire to contribute and do something “meaningful” rather than just acquire things. Roberto Verganti, in his new book, Design-Driven Innovation, argues that there is a “Third Way of Innovation,” driven by meaning, or to be more precise, by those cultural “interpreters” who have the ability to “make sense of things” and give existing things new meaning — and thus create new markets. - Design Mind, September 2009

Roberto Verganti’s fascinating analysis will stimulate all thoughtful business readers, students, and practitioners alike. This passionate and keenly observed book offers a valuable and provocative new view, and will be a fundamental reference for all those interested in design and determined to pursue innovation as a driving factor in their profession. -- Luca di Montezemolo, Chairman Ferrari S.p.A. and Fiat S.p.A.

Every manager interested in innovation should read this book. The perspectives it provides will make a crucial difference to managers in the twenty-first century. -- Marco Iansiti, David Sarnoff Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School; coauthor of The Keystone Advantage

Verganti shares powerful insights into both the process and value of design-driven innovation, to the benefit of business leaders and, ultimately, the customers we serve. -- Brian C. Walker, President and CEO, Herman Miller Inc.

Can design save the world? No, but it can definitely help make it better, especially if integrated within the systems that already have direct impact on the economy and on policy making. Roberto Verganti belongs to a small group of enthusiastic experts and interpreters that have set out to explain the culture of design to the powerful but unaware, so that they can appreciate its full potential. -- Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator, Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art