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A Fine Line: How Design Strategies Are Shaping the Future of Business
For the first time, Hartmut Esslinger, internationally acclaimed designer and founder of frog design, inc., reveals the secrets to better business through better design. Having spent forty years helping build the world’s most recognizable brands, Esslinger shows how business leaders and designers can join forces to build creative strategies that will ensure a more profitable and sustainable future. A Fine Line shares the amazing story of Esslinger’s transformation from industrial design wunderkind to a global innovation powerhouse, while detailing the very real challenges facing businesses in the new global economy. Offering companies far more than a temporary innovation booster, Esslinger shows how he and frog build creative design into the framework of an organization’s competitive strategy, the same approach that has worked so well for leading edge companies such as Sony, Louis Vuitton, Lufthansa, Disney, Hewlett-Packard, SAP, Microsoft, and Apple. Offering a step-by-step overview of the innovation process―from targeting goals to shepherding new products and services to the marketplace―Esslinger reveals how to arrive at a design that reflects an intensely human experience and will connect strongly with consumers. With Esslinger’s unique perspective, rich stories, and global mindset, A Fine Line explores business solutions that are environmentally sustainable and contribute to the future of a thriving and lasting global economy. The blending of design and business intelligence holds the key for shaping a sustainable competitive advantage in the rapidly evolving creative economy. A Fine Line equips business leaders with the necessary tools to thrive in tomorrow’s world.
- GenresDesignBusinessNonfiction
216 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
21 people are currently reading
339 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
November 6, 2011
He knows design is what to be.
And, he himself pioneered the sphere of the design.
And, he himself pioneered the sphere of the design.
June 17, 2020
http://creativityresearch.blogspot.co...
“I understood very early on that businesses need creativity like humans need oxygen, and I was able to convince my clients that they needed to ‘breathe’ in order to flourish” (Esslinger, 2009, p. xii).
By all accounts, frog design, inc. has done everything right. In his book A Fine Line: How Design Strategies are Shaping the Future of Business, frog’s founder, Hartmut Esslinger, takes readers on a personal and professional journey through forty years of cutting-edge design thinking, creative strategies, and innovative problem-solving. Remaining down to earth and surprisingly un-pompous, Esslinger’s narrative is straightforward and informative from both a design and a business perspective, and offers invaluable insight to anyone looking for an insider view of the industry and how design and business principles can be combined for greater force within it.
While still a student, Esslinger had an experience – a rejection in a design competition – that served as an epiphany. Dismissing the current world of design as a stiff and limiting hierarchy, he founded his first design firm, esslinger design (Esslinger purposely did not capitalize the name), in 1969 with one simple vision: that design could be relevant to business and industry and be redefined as a strategic profession. He formulated a six-step, simple but ambitious plan that included working for the client rather than for himself and always looking for the best people when it came to not just business partners and employees, but in clients, too. Providing the best for the best was, in Esslinger’s plan, the way to success. And it worked.
Founding frog (again, no capitalization, as a purposeful rebellion against grammatical rules) shortly thereafter, Esslinger formed a business relationship with Steve Jobs of Apple Computer and created the “Snow White language” that would serve as the basis for Apple’s revolution and a precursor for Apple’s present-day colossal market presence.
Leadership, to Esslinger, was the hinge upon which a company’s success could swing. Principles and vision and strategy were all part of success, but without effective leadership, nothing else could work. Having witnessed the implosion of Apple after Jobs’ dismissal in 1985, he attributed the ensuing dysfunction on lack of foresight and poor leadership. Leaders, Esslinger said, are obligated to make all the right decisions – for their company, its employees, its shareholders, their families, and the local economy; it’s what Tim Brown (2008) of IDEO calls “the people first approach” (87). The most important factors in effective leadership are the desire to explore the unknown, to be willing to take risks, and above all – flexibility. Creative strategy is flexible. So must be its leaders. Frog’s motto, in fact, is Change Is Fun (Esslinger, 2009).
In 2008, Amabile and Khair wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review, in which Amy Edmunson, a professor at Harvard, stressed management’s role in creating a psychologically safe environment in order to foster trust and creativity. Esslinger obviously built frog on this principle, yet was focused and confident, wielding what Jack and Suzy Welch (2007) referred to "The Velvet Hammer” (116) – the firm but gentle approach to managing creative personalities.
Esslinger moves through the various schools of thought in the design world, pointing out the importance of choosing the right creative partner for the job. His strategy was nothing new; domain specificity and interdomain creativity differences have been studied by researchers and scholars like Howard Gardner for years. Donald MacKinnon’s seminal research into the ego, personalities, and self-images of architects in the 1960’s laid solid ground for such theory. (Runco, 2007). Esslinger recognized this and worked it into his success. Putting, for example, a classic designer like Dieter Rams on a project more suited for an artistic designer such as Ross Lovegrove was, to Esslinger, counterintuitive and an irresponsible way to run things. Frog’s strategy, nonetheless, is still one of holistic design, of “strategic designers who are fluent in convergent technologies, social and ecological needs, and business”(p. 53). Like Pixar’s Ed Catmull (2008) noted about his company’s peer culture and creative process, “everyone is fully invested in helping everyone else turn out the best work” (p.69).
(And as an interesting aside, the building in which Pixar is located was designed by Steve Jobs).
Frog’s influence is far-reaching and deeply pervasive and, despite the current economic situation, is still turning a profit as a global design entity. Esslinger and frog have spent the last forty years proving what works in design and industry, and how to incorporate and merge them together to form success in business. A Fine Line puts it in plain, simple terms that not only make sense, but serve as a motivating factor to anyone wishing to follow frog’s lead. Leadership, vision, innovation, and confidence are all overwhelming factors in frog’s rise to the top of the creative design ladder, and are founded on core creativity and business principles that, when patched together the right way, spell great success.
References
Amabile, T. and Khaire, M. (2008, October). Creativity and the role of the leader. Harvard Business Review. 101-109.
Brown, T. (2008, June). Design thinking. Harvard Business Review. 84-92
Catmull, E. (2008, September). How Pixar fosters collective creativity. Harvard Business Review. 65-72.
Runco, M. (2007). Creativity theories and themes: research, development, and practice. Burlington, MA: Elsevier.
Welch, J. and Welch, S. (2007, September 27) Wielding the velvet hammer . Business Week. 4051. 116. Retrieved from http://proxy.buffalostate.edu:2076/eh...
“I understood very early on that businesses need creativity like humans need oxygen, and I was able to convince my clients that they needed to ‘breathe’ in order to flourish” (Esslinger, 2009, p. xii).
By all accounts, frog design, inc. has done everything right. In his book A Fine Line: How Design Strategies are Shaping the Future of Business, frog’s founder, Hartmut Esslinger, takes readers on a personal and professional journey through forty years of cutting-edge design thinking, creative strategies, and innovative problem-solving. Remaining down to earth and surprisingly un-pompous, Esslinger’s narrative is straightforward and informative from both a design and a business perspective, and offers invaluable insight to anyone looking for an insider view of the industry and how design and business principles can be combined for greater force within it.
While still a student, Esslinger had an experience – a rejection in a design competition – that served as an epiphany. Dismissing the current world of design as a stiff and limiting hierarchy, he founded his first design firm, esslinger design (Esslinger purposely did not capitalize the name), in 1969 with one simple vision: that design could be relevant to business and industry and be redefined as a strategic profession. He formulated a six-step, simple but ambitious plan that included working for the client rather than for himself and always looking for the best people when it came to not just business partners and employees, but in clients, too. Providing the best for the best was, in Esslinger’s plan, the way to success. And it worked.
Founding frog (again, no capitalization, as a purposeful rebellion against grammatical rules) shortly thereafter, Esslinger formed a business relationship with Steve Jobs of Apple Computer and created the “Snow White language” that would serve as the basis for Apple’s revolution and a precursor for Apple’s present-day colossal market presence.
Leadership, to Esslinger, was the hinge upon which a company’s success could swing. Principles and vision and strategy were all part of success, but without effective leadership, nothing else could work. Having witnessed the implosion of Apple after Jobs’ dismissal in 1985, he attributed the ensuing dysfunction on lack of foresight and poor leadership. Leaders, Esslinger said, are obligated to make all the right decisions – for their company, its employees, its shareholders, their families, and the local economy; it’s what Tim Brown (2008) of IDEO calls “the people first approach” (87). The most important factors in effective leadership are the desire to explore the unknown, to be willing to take risks, and above all – flexibility. Creative strategy is flexible. So must be its leaders. Frog’s motto, in fact, is Change Is Fun (Esslinger, 2009).
In 2008, Amabile and Khair wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review, in which Amy Edmunson, a professor at Harvard, stressed management’s role in creating a psychologically safe environment in order to foster trust and creativity. Esslinger obviously built frog on this principle, yet was focused and confident, wielding what Jack and Suzy Welch (2007) referred to "The Velvet Hammer” (116) – the firm but gentle approach to managing creative personalities.
Esslinger moves through the various schools of thought in the design world, pointing out the importance of choosing the right creative partner for the job. His strategy was nothing new; domain specificity and interdomain creativity differences have been studied by researchers and scholars like Howard Gardner for years. Donald MacKinnon’s seminal research into the ego, personalities, and self-images of architects in the 1960’s laid solid ground for such theory. (Runco, 2007). Esslinger recognized this and worked it into his success. Putting, for example, a classic designer like Dieter Rams on a project more suited for an artistic designer such as Ross Lovegrove was, to Esslinger, counterintuitive and an irresponsible way to run things. Frog’s strategy, nonetheless, is still one of holistic design, of “strategic designers who are fluent in convergent technologies, social and ecological needs, and business”(p. 53). Like Pixar’s Ed Catmull (2008) noted about his company’s peer culture and creative process, “everyone is fully invested in helping everyone else turn out the best work” (p.69).
(And as an interesting aside, the building in which Pixar is located was designed by Steve Jobs).
Frog’s influence is far-reaching and deeply pervasive and, despite the current economic situation, is still turning a profit as a global design entity. Esslinger and frog have spent the last forty years proving what works in design and industry, and how to incorporate and merge them together to form success in business. A Fine Line puts it in plain, simple terms that not only make sense, but serve as a motivating factor to anyone wishing to follow frog’s lead. Leadership, vision, innovation, and confidence are all overwhelming factors in frog’s rise to the top of the creative design ladder, and are founded on core creativity and business principles that, when patched together the right way, spell great success.
References
Amabile, T. and Khaire, M. (2008, October). Creativity and the role of the leader. Harvard Business Review. 101-109.
Brown, T. (2008, June). Design thinking. Harvard Business Review. 84-92
Catmull, E. (2008, September). How Pixar fosters collective creativity. Harvard Business Review. 65-72.
Runco, M. (2007). Creativity theories and themes: research, development, and practice. Burlington, MA: Elsevier.
Welch, J. and Welch, S. (2007, September 27) Wielding the velvet hammer . Business Week. 4051. 116. Retrieved from http://proxy.buffalostate.edu:2076/eh...
May 27, 2020
One could definitely see the influence of frog design and Hartmut Esslinger, I found this book a bit dry and slow-going. My background is not in design so that may be a contributing factor. I did learn about kaizen and will definitely be reading more about this Japanese work theory.
February 4, 2012
I loved this book! Esslinger really understands product development and how holistic of an endeavor it really is. I enjoyed learning about his experiences with some of the worlds top companies and how he made their products better. It really comes down to controlling the entire process and having the best people to see things through without cutting corners. This book is innovative and talks a lot about the role innovation plays in business (an enormous one). Esslinger really focuses towards the end on the role of the factory and how they can make or break products very easily. A fair bit on sustainability, which was great to see and how the companies of the future will have sustainable practices and will be holistic in their approaches. A very inspiring book and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the product space or really anyone trying to learn more about the world
November 9, 2010
A really thought provoking read and an interesting one to read so quickly after Designing for People. The book touches on a broad spectrum of issues relevant to designers today from the requirement for business and design to collaborate more strategically through to 'green' design and even some commentary on the potential of open source design and participatory design via social networks. Worth a read. I'll be suggesting it for UX Bookclub.
July 24, 2009
Very disappointing. I think Frog Design has done some amazing things in Product Design (Apple, Sony, Lufthansa Airlines, etc.) but this book offers little insight of the development of those products. Instead it reads like a promotional brochure.
January 27, 2010
Fascinating book, it will make you re-think how products are made and why design is not just for the dreamed up product, but can be applied to the entire production process. I have followed frog design for a while and this books only cements why this company is Great!!!
January 3, 2010
Love the piece about co-design being the future of design. I think I'll call Hartmut and dig deeper on that theme.
Read
January 13, 2010BusinessWeek Best Innovation books of 2009
Interesting case studies including Apple, Disney and SAP
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/...
Interesting case studies including Apple, Disney and SAP
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/...
April 7, 2010
Didn't ever really get to to point other than a company should hire frog design, the author's company.
June 7, 2013
Interesting and insightful, but nothing earth-shattering here... unless you are someone with no idea or appreciation of industrial design- in which case this will be a real eye-opener.
August 20, 2013
Hartmut is probably not into writing books, this book is where he puts his share of experience out into the world that has obviously been awaiting his thoughts on the hot topic of Design Strategy
March 18, 2013
Just awesome, especially when use design as a forerunner for your products.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews