Design a Better Business: New Tools, Skills, and Mindset for Strategy and Innovation

Fantastic informative book for anyone interested in business design at any level. I have applied the tools within to great affect, I would highly recommend!

Such a useful companion to the Alexander Osterwalder books

This is an instant favourite to me, I love Business Model Canvas and this is very much in the same vein with out of the box ideas, strategies and ways to get unstuck when looking at new and existing business models. This is well written, very well designed and one of those books you have on your desk and chat over with colleagues. Love this.

useful base for giving structure to what is usually a messy creative process

Oh, I dunno. I've read a million business books and these days not much gets me up and running. This book tho I am really enjoying. My only gripe is its design. There's nothing specifically wrong with it but it's all a bit of design overkill, a bit confusing to be honest visually, and weirdly sort of lacks overall coherence. In a book specifically about business design this is perhaps a little unfortunate. But your views may differ and that is all fine. It doesn't stop me offering a solid 5***** review! I have flicked through the whole book and also started reading through the first few sections in more depth and so while I haven't completed the book I can at least given a reasonable overview. It's a book packed with good advice and clearly this is advice offered from a place of hard won experience and quality thinking. It ranges from the simple, like don't sit it a desk doing costly, slow research for weeks when you can pick up the phone and talk to people quickly, to how to really gel a team that works and enjoys their work. I can certainly recommend this book as a solid start up guide, but also as a guide to progression however you might define that. I suppose it's a super solid handbook that's worth the investment.

This book is absolutely great and a must-buy for anyone starting a new business. It is full of great info and highly practical exercises while being both visually rich and entertaining. Strategy and planning made simple and stimulating!

So many great business authors fall short with the sequel to a best seller. I'm delighted to say that this is not a sequel that falls short. If you liked the original business model generator book (and I did), chances are you'll love this. It's an unusual book, in that it's definitely not just a linear expansion of the first book, offering more depth, more case studies and more variants on the canvas. Rather it's taking the same innovative, visual ethos, and providing a whole series of new tools to use in areas that are central or peripheral to the business model canvas from the first book. Just starting out designing a business model? How about spending time on the vision with the "5 bold steps vision canvas". Need to communicate the essence of your business? Why not try using the story telling canvas. Need to revisit your business model and innovate? How about the ideation tools. As with the first book, the tools given are simple, effective, but more than almost any other business book - incredibly practical and easy to apply. I've used this in FTSE100 corporates and with small businesses as a consultant - armed with no more than a flip chart, some sharpies and post-its, people really can generate magic with this book and its predecessor. You can probably tell now, but I highly recommend this book. Packed with short but punchy examples, free of "listen to me I'm super smart and experienced" author speak, and presented (as you'd expect) in a visual and engaging way that allows you to dip in and out, this book will undoubtedly see plenty of use from me over the coming years.

It's been written in 100 days, and from a design perspective. They've got high-level overviews of efforts by a range of people, and have obviously spoken to a number of businesses. However, the writing style is a little hyperbolic, there's a degree of repetition in a book that's already quite short on text, and it's very heavy on arguing that Design trumps facts and figures in building a better business. What it's short on is case studies that then outline what benefit it has actually created - a pharmaceutical company may have identified that it could sell its knowledge as well as pharmaceuticals themselves, but did that actually make much difference to their bottom line? Don't know, it doesn't follow through to say. I want to like this book. It draws on planning tools promoted by well-regarded startup figures like Steve Blank, but I'm not convinced. Some of what's said is reasonable - get out of the building and speak to your customers (or potential customers). But it tries to apply this to existing business planning without apparently considering what risks might be introduced in terms of business continuity. It would be great for building a range of possible approaches for going forwards, but it's short on detail of how to narrow down on the right answers. It mentions A-B testing, but nothing about formal testing approaches, bias, challenges and risks (like that of alienating a customer by trying out a sub-optimal idea with them). It came as no surprise to read at the end how quickly the book was put together, and that most of the authors seem to be firmly from a design background. The problem is that they earlier talked about wanting the 'unusual suspect', ensuring you have input from people from different backgrounds who will have rather different perspectives, but then ignores most of the approaches the other groups would prefer to push the one that plays most to their own capabilities and expectations and far less to those who thrive in working out more specific plans and details. It could be a great process to follow, and there are interesting ideas, but ends up seeming fixated on one approach to the exclusion of other important efforts, including those which may be necessary to get investment.