Business Design Association

The Design of Business by Roger Martin is among the most fundamental and comprehensive books ever written about the subject of business design and design thinking. The book begins by clearly explaining the knowledge funnel concept. The basis of the knowledge funnel is that new business knowledge begins as a mystery – scattered and unorganized.

The purpose of this article is to get everyone up to speed on what design thinking is and why you should care. The idea behind design thinking is that creative principles found in design methods can be used to develop new and innovative solutions for business. So, if design thinking is based on creative principles [...]

A historical narrative starts the book outlining four major ‘ages’: 1. Agricultural Age (farmers)
 2. Industrial Age (factory workers) 
3. Information Age (knowledge workers)
 4. Conceptual Age (creators and empathizers) The fourth stage is where Pink focuses and how businesses can be successful.
Pink references three prevailing trends pointing towards the future of business and the [...]

Should a newspaper’s graphic designer worry about whether it’s printed on recycled paper or not? Should an interior designer working on a new restaurant care about the fuel efficiency of the furnace heating the place? Should an industrial designer of laptop computers be concerned about what happens to these products when they’re discarded by their [...]

Animus Strategic Design – Shopper Marketing specialists – was hired by Brahma’s VP Marketing in order to “create a sustainable and competitive strategy for the client’s products, especially at the points of purchase”. Brahma’s problem solving focus was on bars and establishments where beer was consumed on the premises. It didn’t include supermarkets or retail [...]

The words ‘design’ and ‘business strategy’ are not entirely comfortable together. Design is a creative activity; it thrives on innovation and originality. The search for a design solution is often quite literally a search for a surprise. A business strategy, on the other hand, is often a plan explicitly devised to avoid a surprise. Strategies [...]

The use of design in Brazil has grown significantly, resulting in an increased interest from private companies of diverse sizes. Are we designers ready to apply design strategy and design thinking to small companies? These small companies are still in the process of redefining their internal and external values and commercial standards making the strategy [...]

Although mainly intended for web developers, designers and architects “A project guide to UX design” can be very useful to any professional interested in user centered design. In this book Russ Unger and Carolyn Chandler demostrate techniques and tools used on the development of design projects, using real life projects.

Welcome to the BDA! Home of the collaborative study of business design. We’re setting out to bring you the richest material, specifically about business design, in order to help you better understand the advantages of integrating design thinking into the world of business. By doing so, we hope to increase the pace at which design [...]