Roger Martin, a leading proponent of design thinking in business, makes the case that we can understand innovation through a new model of how businesses advance knowledge over time, and that businesses fail to innovate when they show greater concern for producing reliable (predictable and reproducible) outcomes than valid ones that actually meet objectives. Martin argues that businesses can do a better job at innovating—and advancing knowledge—if they embrace design thinking. Using examples such as Procter & Gamble, RIM (BlackBerry) and Cirque du Soleil, he examines how companies transform themselves into successful design-thinking organizations.
Roger Martin has served as the dean of the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto since September 1998. Previously, he spent 13 years as a director of Monitor Company, a global strategy consulting firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he served as co-head of the firm for two years and founded the company’s Canadian office. He writes extensively on design and is a regular columnist for BusinessWeek’s online Innovation and Design channel. He is the author of the books The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking and The Responsibility Virus: How Control Freaks, Shrinking Violets—And the Rest of Us—Can Harness the Power of True Partnership.
