As the recession runs its course, firms of all sizes across a variety of sectors will be thinking of what they can do to grow their way out of trouble. New products or services, or a change to the markets served, are obvious starting points.

Into this innovation-hungry environment comes a new book from design agency IDEO. Brown, IDEO's chief executive and president, has in some ways updated a previous book by the firm's founder, David Kelley, with a more general guide to what he calls "design thinking". This means applying the basic approach of good designers—to combine an understanding of human needs with knowledge of what is technologically possible to create better products—to a wider set of management issues.

While it's good to have a designer on your board, Brown would rather see the entire board thinking like designers. He suggests that design has "started moving upstream" and sets out examples of successful projects before moving on to list the tools that might help conventional business people behave more like designers.