Beverly Rudkin Ingle - Design thinking for entrepreneurs and small businesses : putting the power of design to work

DESIGN THINKING FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND SMALL BUSINESSES

PUTTING THE POWER OF DESIGN TO WORK

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Beverly Rudkin Ingle

Design Thinking for Entrepreneurs and Small Businesses: Putting the Power of Design to Work

Copyright 2013 by Beverly Rudkin Ingle

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ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-4302-6181-0

ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4302-6182-7

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In memory of my mama.

Contents

Foreword

While I was having dinner with Steve Myers of CERN, he shared with me some of his stories of the development and first operation of the Large Hadron Collider and his frustrations with the media who by and large sought to scare the general public with stories of tiny black holes that could endanger the entire planet. His team of physicists was largely unprepared for the media assault and fared badly, which unfortunately led to many apocalyptic stories in the European tabloids. Listening sympathetically to this story, I remembered something my father once told me, You cant be good at everything. Concentrate on what you know youre good at, make good guesses at the things that are within reach of your understanding, and for everything else take the best counsel you can find. Its advice I carry around with me like an old heirloom watch, and its advice Steve and his team could have used. Hes an expert physicist, but no expert at media relations.

Technology drives democratization, from areas as diverse as the political arena (think of Twitters role in the Arab Spring) to the arts (Adobe Premiere, the leading filmmakers tool, runs quite happily on my old MacBook Pro) and of course, the Internet start-up culture that has opened up resourcespreviously only available to large enterprisesto the bedroom entrepreneur through cloud computing. Theres no end in sight. In the next few years, manufacturing capabilities will move from the fabrication plant to the garage by way of affordable 3D printing technology. Its a rosy story; finally we have at our disposal all the technology and services required to harness our creative impulses. We can move from a sketch on the back of a taxi receipt to a highly successful product or service used by millions in a matter of months.

But how do we leverage these technologies and services to our best advantage if we dont also have access to resources that help us build our strategic vision and entrepreneurial dexterity? I want to introduce you to someone who gives you that access.