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Design Attitude

“If you freeze an idea too quickly, you fall in love with it.

PROTOTYPING If you refi ne it too quickly, you become attached to it

and it becomes very hard to keep exploring, to keep

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looking for better. The crudeness of the early models
DESIGN in particular is very deliberate.”

Jim Glymph, Gehry Partners

As businesspeople, when we see a prototype we tend to focus on its it. As previously discussed , business model prototypes vary in terms of
physical form or its representation, viewing it as something that models, scale and level of refi nement. We believe it is important to think through
or encapsulates the essence of, what we eventually intend to do. We a number of basic business model possibilities before developing a
perceive a prototype as something that simply needs to be refi ned. In business case for a specifi c model. This spirit of inquiry is called design
the design profession, prototypes do play a role in pre-implementation attitude, because it is so central to the design professions, as Professor
visualization and testing. But they also play another very important Boland discovered. The attributes of design attitude include a willingness
role: that of a tool of inquiry. In this sense they serve as thinking aids for to explore crude ideas, rapidly discard them, then take the time to exam-
exploring new possibilities. They help us develop a better understanding ine multiple possibilities before choosing to refi ne a few—and accepting
of what could be. uncertainty until a design direction matures. These things don’t come
naturally to businesspeople, but they are requirements for generating
This same design attitude can be applied to business model innovation. new business models. Design attitude demands changing one’s orienta-
By making a prototype of a business model we can explore particular tion from making decisions to creating options from which to choose.
aspects of an idea: novel Revenue Streams, for example. Participants
learn about the elements of a prototype as they construct and discuss

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