8. A WELL-DESIGNED PRODUCT DOES
NOT EQUAL A WELL-DESIGNED BUSINESS
Beauty is way more than skin-deep. Apple has thrived not
simply because each of its products is lustworthy, but because
of the way they reinforce one another (unlike at enterprises
such as Microsoft). The biggest challenge for Fab may not
be whether chief designer Bradford Shellhammer’s taste will
keep customers engaged but whether CEO Jason Goldberg’s
aggressive expansion plans will prove too helter-skelter. Nike
thrives not simply because it has well-designed shoes but
because CEO Parker and design chief Hoke integrate shoe
design with manufacturing, with marketing, and, yes, with
financial realities.
9. THE BIG PICTURE IS A MASS OF DETAILS
When Samsung Electronics CEO Boo-keun Yoon talks about
drawing inspiration “from the contours of a wineglass,” you
can get the impression that it is the little things that matter
most. “Sweating that detail for the experience,” as Hosain
Rahman, CEO of Jawbone, puts it. But as you dig more deeply
into the businesses of Samsung and Jawbone--and Flipboard
and J.Crew--what you see is a meshing of both small-bore
focus and big-picture vision. “Jenna [Lyons] is a designer all
day long,” says J.Crew brand president Libby Wadle of the
company’s executive creative director, “but she can also have
conversations about real estate, about parts of running the
business. . . . Her head is not in the clouds.”
10. IT IS STILL DAY ONE
7. THERE’S SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE
SUN
In an era of big data, we can convince ourselves that if we
just watch consumers closely enough and look at the numbers
the right way, all our problems will be solved. But consumers
will rarely alert us to opportunities they have not yet seen.
The best designers can divine those opportunities from the
gaps in user experience. That’s what has fueled the rise of
breakthrough design-led enterprises such as Airbnb and
Pinterest. It is a perspective that infuses “The Best Designs
of 2013,” the finalists in our annual Innovation by Design
Awards. No focus group had been clamoring for a Leap
Motion Controller. Nor were Cambodian mothers agitating
to add iron to their family’s diet, a challenge the Lucky
Iron Fish Project cleverly surmounts. Only AidPod saw that
packing medicine within crates of Coca-Cola bottles could
create a low-cost aid-distribution network to remote, needy
communities.
Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, uses the expression “day one”
to describe how far along his enterprise is in its maturation:
Despite two decades of success and growth, Bezos contends,
Amazon is at the beginning. You could apply that same
perspective when assessing design’s impact on business.
So much has changed in the past decade, it is natural to
feel a bit of wide-eyed amazement about how far we have
come. Yet given the chaotic, fast-changing nature of our
world, and the increasing requirement for flexible responses
to new challenges and new opportunities, there’s no question
that design has only begun to reach its potential. Businesses
cannot sacrifice “better” and “nicer” in order to be “faster”
or “more efficient.” We need to do it all. Which means the
design revolution is only at its dawn.
These 10 lessons are only the beginning. Within this issue,
you will find much more--starting with our timeline of notable
design moments over the past decade. A more extensive
e-book version of our Apple design oral history is available
via Amazon, iBookstore, and Byliner. And on October 2, you
can experience a live version of this content at our Innovation
by Design Conference in New York, where you’ll meet the
top folks at Airbnb, Burberry, Jawbone, and Nike; have an
opportunity for intimate hosted sessions with Warby Parker
and PepsiCo; and see the live announcement of this year’s
Innovation by Design Award winners. (Space is limited.)
Our goal with all of this coverage is to inspire and encourage
the next wave of design and the innovation that comes with it.
When design is embedded at the center of business, anything
is possible.