How Firms Succeed: A Field Guide to Design Management

How Firms Succeed is a hands-on guide to running any design-related business from a two-person graphics team to middle-management to CEOs of multi-national firms, offering advice on specific problems and situations and providing insight into the art of inspirational management and strategic thinking. Together, Cramer and Simpson provide “deceptively simple yet ultimately critical guidelines” that inspire and educate designers at all professional levels. It combines practical solutions with business theory. Sections address such critic topics as marketing, operations, professional services and finances as well as the Anatomy of Leadership, a new perspective on the how’s and why’s of design leadership. The book includes chapters on such topics as “Demystifying Design Fees,” “How Technology is Redesigning Design,” “Principal Leadership—Choosing the Next Generation,” ” Setting New Standards for Client Service” and “Performance-Based Motivatin! g Your Firm.” Each chapter closes with a list of questions intended to give the reader points of reflection for their own goals and experiences.