The Designful Company: How to Build a Culture of Nonstop Innovation by Marty Neumeier is a read well-worth your time. It won’t take too much of it, though. You could start and finish the book on a plane ride or a long lunch. The large print and pictures form a sweet synergy with the content, making it a quick, power-packed page-turner.  I quit flagging pages after I realized I was marking every other page. The concept?

Thanks to unprecedented market clutter, differentiation is becoming the most powerful strategy in business and the primary beneficiary of innovation. So if innovation drives differentiation, what drives innovation? The answer, hidden in plain sight, is design (page 6).

Neumeier goes on to explain design is moving away from “posters and toasters” and other “things” to systems and processes; anyone who is working to improve a situation is a “designer,” acting as change agents in nearly every field – including healthcare. The book hones in on “wicked problems” – problems so persistent, pervasive, or slippery that they seem insoluble (page 1) – and the Levers for Change.

The Designful Company made my head spin with ideas and questions, which in my opinion, is what makes a “great” book. That’s right. Great.