Thinking like a designer
can transform the way
you develop products,
services, processes – and
even strategy.
Thinking
by Tim Brown
T
Photos courtesy of IDEO
HOMAS EDISON created the electric lightbulb and then wrapped an entire industry around it. The lightbulb is most often
thought of as his signature invention, but
Edison understood that the bulb was little more
than a parlor trick without a system of electric power
generation and transmission to make it truly useful.
So he created that, too.
Thus Edison’s genius lay in his ability to conceive
of a fully developed marketplace, not simply a discrete device. He was able to envision how people
would want to use what he made, and he engineered
toward that insight. He wasn’t always prescient (he
