Product Description
"Esslinger's work shows that taste can triumph, design and production can be soul mates, and the eye of an individual can shape a product and a company." —From the Foreword by Michael Moritz, partner, Sequoia Capital For the first time, Hartmut Esslinger, internationally acclaimed designer and founder of frog design, inc., reveals the secrets to better business through better design. Having spent forty years helping build the world's most recognizable brands, Esslinger shows how business leaders and designers can join forces to build creative strategies that will ensure a more profitable and sustainable future. A Fine Line shares the amazing story of Esslinger's transformation from industrial design wunderkind to a global innovation powerhouse, while detailing the very real challenges facing businesses in the new global economy. Offering companies far more than a temporary innovation booster, Esslinger shows how he and frog build creative design into the framework of an organization's competitive strategy, the same approach that has worked so well for leading edge companies such as Sony, Louis Vuitton, Lufthansa, Disney, Hewlett-Packard, SAP, Microsoft, and Apple. Offering a step-by-step overview of the innovation process—from targeting goals to shepherding new products and services to the marketplace—Esslinger reveals how to arrive at a design that reflects an intensely human experience and will connect strongly with consumers. With Esslinger's unique perspective, rich stories, and global mindset, A Fine Line explores business solutions that are environmentally sustainable and contribute to the future of a thriving and lasting global economy. The blending of design and business intelligence holds the key for shaping a sustainable competitive advantage in the rapidly evolving creative economy. A Fine Line equips business leaders with the necessary tools to thrive in tomorrow's world. Design Strategy Examples from Frog Design, Inc. 
Apple's Brand and Design DNA
Frog Design collaborated on Apple’s “Snow-White” design language in the early 1980s. We worked closely with Steve Jobs and Apple’s developers to innovate computer usability and appearance, resulting in iconic products with no historic precedent. | 
Disney Cruise Lines
Frog Design's retro-futuristic designs for the Disney Magic® and Disney Wonder® combine classic maritime elegance with starship swagger – and appeal to parents and children, alike. | 
Lufthansa Airlines
In the 1990s, Lufthansa’s Executive Board asked Frog Design to create a new and more emotionally engaging image for the airline and its base at the Frankfurt am Main Airport. From check-in gates to plane interiors, our designs helped redefine the modern air travel experience. | |
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 The Man Behind the Innovation Curtain |
| Review Date: July 9, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Daniel T. Edmundson, |
In A Fine Line Hartmut Esslinger gives forward-thinking insight into building a company's creative culture. The book allows you to crawl inside the mind of frog design's founder who held the fate of major brands like Disney and Sony in his hands. It effectively reveals Hartmut's approach to unique business solutions and the influence of design on corporate strategy. What I enjoyed most about the book's revelations, aside from providing key design and innovation wisdom, are the honest and humanistic anecdotes that Hartmut offers about his experiences working with Apple, cultivating a growing design firm, and pushing brands to take risks and move beyond the "norm."
Inspiring to say the least.
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How designers and managers can create an "innovation machine"
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| Review Date: December 14, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Robert Morris, Dallas, Texas |
Throughout the years since 1969 when Hartmut Esslinger founded frog design (one of the world's leading strategic design firms), having learned firsthand how truly great business leaders partner with designers, he has developed "a step-by-step innovation process that leverages the power of that partnership. That process is at the heart of the collaborative model of innovation-driven business design that [he's] outlined in this book."
First, Esslinger examines "the role of design in the rapidly developing creative economy and how savvy business leaders cultivate a culture of innovation within their organizations." Next, Esslinger "walks" his reader through a step-by-step view of the innovation process, "from targeting goals to successfully shepherding innovations to market," and then takes an "in-depth look at the tools of innovation and the sometimes counterintuitive process of following a highly technical path to arrive at an intensely human experience." Then in the book's final chapters, Esslinger takes "a long look" at the future of manufacturing and how business can transform the "cheap, cheaper, toxic" model of production outsourcing "into one of mutually beneficial and economic collaboration."
I wholly agree with Esslinger that creativity is the new major driver and a multi-million dollar segment of the new economic order. Also, that "design is the means by which companies can apply creativity strategically to their business purpose." I also agree that only business strategies based on creativity, insight, and cultural awareness can produce benefits that result in "human- adaptive solutions and not in commodity like products for which nobody is willing to pay full price - especially when the offerings outnumber the buyer...Only strategies that explore and take risks - those that are willing to surprise and inspire on the human scale - can hope to win in our evolving economy." It is imperative that designers understand the business context within which every organization struggles to compete successfully; it is imperative, meanwhile, that executives understand the role that designers must play "in the process of infusing any business with the energy of design-driven innovation." Esslinger draws upon a wealth of real-world experience when suggesting how creative minds and business minds can collaborate effectively, how both sides of what he characterizes as a "business-design partnership" can process within the process they share.
Readers will appreciate Esslinger's brilliant insights in combination with practice advice with regard to taking full advantage if them, as when he reveals and discusses "the four frog principles (Page 41), when he examines the three-step process by which a company can become an "engine of innovation" (Pages 57-71), when he examines the four-step process for ecologizing industrial production in today's globally networked environment (Pages 86-92), when he explains how to implement the ecological load factor (ELF) rating system and overcome the challenges of "going green" (Pages 94- 109), and when reviewing the benefits and advantages of open-source design that can be produced by professional collaboration on a global scale (Pages 119-128). Esslinger concludes with a compelling affirmation of faith that designers, executives, and consumers "are ready to be mobilized as never before through our understanding of the need for change.... As we prepare to enter this vast, new world of creativity in business, science, and industry, our mastery of today's `already here' challenges can guide us as we make `tomorrow' a productive and humanistic adventure. Welcome to the journey." Indeed, it has already begun.
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Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out two books by Roger Martin, Opposable Mind: Winning Through Integrative Thinking and The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage as well as Howard Gardner's Five Minds for the Future, Tim Brown's Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation, Roberto Verganti's Design Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean, and two books by Thomas Kelley, The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm and The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO's Strategies for Defeating the Devil's Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization, both co-authored with Jonathan Littman. |
Ingenious
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| Review Date: July 7, 2009 |
| Reviewer: C. Rossi, USA |
Finally a book on innovation that doesn't come from the "Ivory Tower" of business but is based on experience.
Hartmut Esslinger's book "A Fine Line" is his story on how he has defended creativity in his personal life and in the Board Rooms of major corporations around the world . A great read with new insights on working with Steve Jobs at apple and executives at Sony on their path to become recognized innovation brands. |
Not the typical business book
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| Review Date: July 9, 2009 |
| Reviewer: sparcgirl, |
| A wonderful book, full of sharp and honest observations about the not always easy marriage between design and business. Unlike other books on design, "A Fine Line" is not all about shapes, surfaces, and interfaces. And unlike other business books, it is not all about numbers, winning, and boardroom intrigues. Soulful and with a deeply humanistic understanding of consumers, "A Fine Line" brings culture back to business. |
Any business library needs this
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| Review Date: September 18, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Midwest Book Review, Oregon, WI USA |
A FINE LINE: HOW DESIGN STRATEGIES ARE SHAPING THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS comes from a designer and founder of Frog Design Inc. and provides a series of tips of better business through better branding designs. This tells of the author's change from an industrial design genius to a global innovation powerhouse in the new global economy, telling how he and Frog blend creative design into company competitive strategies for maximum effect. A fine, and rare, step-by-step overview of the entire innovation process, from setting goals to designing to reflect the marketplace and connect with consumers. Any business library needs this.
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A Perfect Blend
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| Review Date: July 1, 2009 |
| Reviewer: AvidReader, SF/NYC |
| I wanted to read this book because of the catalytic role of Hartmut Esslinger (and frog design) in groundbreaking innovation in design - and this book definitely delivers some fascinating history and perspective. But what I also found was a perfect blend of history and really practical insights into the role of design in my own business and work. The stories and anecdotes are fun and engaging reading - the practical material and processes are thought-provoking and really appreciated! |
Team
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| Review Date: July 15, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Bente Palouda, San Jose, CA. |
| Esslinger does a remarkable job showing how teamwork contributes to artistic design and successful production at the same time. While artists and designers are often envisioned as solitary and individualistic, Esslinger shows how this energy, converted into a team approach, enhances art and production simultaneously. Esslinger gives examples, e.g., some clients may seek to exert excessive political will in the development of design and production -- even at the expense of the project. Esslinger will get involved early. Settling internal wrangling early may annoy the client who may pull out of a project he can't control. Esslinger points out why this alternative is preferable to late stage failure when personal and financial resources may've become exhausted. Esslinger's approach is itself highly individualistic, probably why frog design has been so successful. All the same, readers who enjoy a political mention now and then will notice that Andrea Merkel made it into this book, a must buy for both design moguls and CEOs. -- RLW |
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