So, I.D. magazine published this trolling article, and I can’t resist linking to Down with Innovation, precisely because it (unintentionally) makes so many of my points about business fluency for me.

I sympathize that design thinking is getting a lot of attention the business press, leaving design doing without the love it deserves. But this sort of reaction is counterproductive. We’re here to co-opt innovation, not throw a tantrum because we aren’t understood. From the article:

"The problem that designers face now is the same problem they have faced all along: how to communicate with clients who lack a basic grounding in the visual arts and don’t seem to think it matters. Businesspeople don’t need to become designers. They need to learn that there are types of awareness and understanding expressed through visual form…"

The problem isn’t business people who don’t care. That’s just juvenile abdication. The real problem is designers who don’t care enough about business to understand how to communicate the value of their work. That’s why business fluency is so important. Until designers get there, complaining about business not getting it is just venting. Instead we could spend our time inventing better ways to work with business, even if that means embracing innovation and design thinking.
thanks Black Belt Jones for the link