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Frame Innovation

Create New Thinking by Design

Part of Design Thinking, Design Theory

Author Kees Dorst
$24.95 US
The MIT Press
40 per carton
On sale Oct 22, 2024 | 9780262550963
Sales rights: World
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How organizations can use practices developed by expert designers to solve today’s open, complex, dynamic, and networked problems.


When organizations apply old methods of problem-solving to new kinds of problems, they may accomplish only temporary fixes or some ineffectual tinkering around the edges. Today’s problems are a new breed—open, complex, dynamic, and networked—and require a radically different response. In this book, Kees Dorst describes a new, innovation-centered approach to problem-solving in organizations: frame creation. It applies “design thinking,” but it goes beyond the borrowed tricks and techniques that usually characterize that term. Frame creation focuses not on the generation of solutions but on the ability to create new approaches to the problem situation itself.

The strategies Dorst presents are drawn from the unique, sophisticated, multilayered practices of top designers, and from insights that have emerged from fifty years of design research. Dorst describes the nine steps of the frame creation process and illustrates their application to real-world problems with a series of varied case studies. He maps innovative solutions that include rethinking a store layout so retail spaces encourage purchasing rather than stealing, applying the frame of a music festival to understand late-night problems of crime and congestion in a club district, and creative ways to attract young employees to a temporary staffing agency. Dorst provides tools and methods for implementing frame creation, offering not so much a how-to manual as a do-it-yourself handbook—a guide that will help practitioners develop their own approaches to problem-solving and creating innovation.
Series Foreword vii
Acknowledgments xiii
Preface xv
1 Challenges 1
We are not solving our problems anymore 1
The challenges 9
Moving forward 18
2 Pioneers 23
The Young Designers foundation 23
The Designing Out Crime center 30
Learning from the pioneers 37
3 Lessons from Design 41
Four questions about design 41
An anatomy of design practices 55
Five lessons from design 59
4 The Frame Creation Model 73
Frame creation 73
Case studies 80
First remarks 97
5 The Principles and Practices of Frame Creation 99
The principles of frame creation 99
Frame creation practices 109
6 The Open, Complex, Dynamic, and Networked Organization 121
Driving innovation 121
Toward frame innovation 126
7 The Three Challenges of Frame Innovation 133
Seeing differently 134
Thinking differently 135
Doing differently 143
8 The Art of Frame Innovation 151
Making it happen 151
Path to action 171
Appendix 1 An Expert Designer at Work 177
Appendix 2 Is Design "Searching" or "Learning"? 183
Appendix 3 More Research Is Needed 187
Appendix 4 Inspiration 189
References 193
Index 201
additional book photo
additional book photo
additional book photo
additional book photo
"Kees Dorst manages in his new book Frame Innovation: Create New Thinking by Design to provide a practical new approach to design-led innovation. His frame creation approach enables the addressing of difficult and wicked problems through the use of design thinking. All managers who run firms that want to compete on value rather than cost should familiarize themselves with this approach. I commend this book to the global business community."
—Göran Roos, Professor in Strategic Design, Faculty of Design, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia; coauthor of Managing Intellectual Capital in Practice

"Studies show that a key aspect of the creative ways in which designers think and work is problem-framing, or generating perspectives that engender new understanding of the problem and offer bridges to new solutions. Kees Dorst skillfully explains and develops this concept, illustrates its application with real, complex, and contemporary examples, and shows how teams and organizations can work in this creative, innovative, and designerly way."
—Nigel Cross, Emeritus Professor of Design Studies, The Open University, UK

"A fascinating journey into problem-solving for the twenty-first century. Dorst goes beyond the superficial fads and ready-made recipes of popular design thinking cookbooks and provides a robust and clear framework for why and how design can address problems in our society and economy. I will use it with my business school students."
—Roberto Verganti, Professor of Leadership and Innovation, Politecnico di Milano; author of Design-Driven Innovation

About

How organizations can use practices developed by expert designers to solve today’s open, complex, dynamic, and networked problems.


When organizations apply old methods of problem-solving to new kinds of problems, they may accomplish only temporary fixes or some ineffectual tinkering around the edges. Today’s problems are a new breed—open, complex, dynamic, and networked—and require a radically different response. In this book, Kees Dorst describes a new, innovation-centered approach to problem-solving in organizations: frame creation. It applies “design thinking,” but it goes beyond the borrowed tricks and techniques that usually characterize that term. Frame creation focuses not on the generation of solutions but on the ability to create new approaches to the problem situation itself.

The strategies Dorst presents are drawn from the unique, sophisticated, multilayered practices of top designers, and from insights that have emerged from fifty years of design research. Dorst describes the nine steps of the frame creation process and illustrates their application to real-world problems with a series of varied case studies. He maps innovative solutions that include rethinking a store layout so retail spaces encourage purchasing rather than stealing, applying the frame of a music festival to understand late-night problems of crime and congestion in a club district, and creative ways to attract young employees to a temporary staffing agency. Dorst provides tools and methods for implementing frame creation, offering not so much a how-to manual as a do-it-yourself handbook—a guide that will help practitioners develop their own approaches to problem-solving and creating innovation.

Table of Contents

Series Foreword vii
Acknowledgments xiii
Preface xv
1 Challenges 1
We are not solving our problems anymore 1
The challenges 9
Moving forward 18
2 Pioneers 23
The Young Designers foundation 23
The Designing Out Crime center 30
Learning from the pioneers 37
3 Lessons from Design 41
Four questions about design 41
An anatomy of design practices 55
Five lessons from design 59
4 The Frame Creation Model 73
Frame creation 73
Case studies 80
First remarks 97
5 The Principles and Practices of Frame Creation 99
The principles of frame creation 99
Frame creation practices 109
6 The Open, Complex, Dynamic, and Networked Organization 121
Driving innovation 121
Toward frame innovation 126
7 The Three Challenges of Frame Innovation 133
Seeing differently 134
Thinking differently 135
Doing differently 143
8 The Art of Frame Innovation 151
Making it happen 151
Path to action 171
Appendix 1 An Expert Designer at Work 177
Appendix 2 Is Design "Searching" or "Learning"? 183
Appendix 3 More Research Is Needed 187
Appendix 4 Inspiration 189
References 193
Index 201

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Praise

"Kees Dorst manages in his new book Frame Innovation: Create New Thinking by Design to provide a practical new approach to design-led innovation. His frame creation approach enables the addressing of difficult and wicked problems through the use of design thinking. All managers who run firms that want to compete on value rather than cost should familiarize themselves with this approach. I commend this book to the global business community."
—Göran Roos, Professor in Strategic Design, Faculty of Design, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia; coauthor of Managing Intellectual Capital in Practice

"Studies show that a key aspect of the creative ways in which designers think and work is problem-framing, or generating perspectives that engender new understanding of the problem and offer bridges to new solutions. Kees Dorst skillfully explains and develops this concept, illustrates its application with real, complex, and contemporary examples, and shows how teams and organizations can work in this creative, innovative, and designerly way."
—Nigel Cross, Emeritus Professor of Design Studies, The Open University, UK

"A fascinating journey into problem-solving for the twenty-first century. Dorst goes beyond the superficial fads and ready-made recipes of popular design thinking cookbooks and provides a robust and clear framework for why and how design can address problems in our society and economy. I will use it with my business school students."
—Roberto Verganti, Professor of Leadership and Innovation, Politecnico di Milano; author of Design-Driven Innovation

Additional formats

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