I’ve been thinking about the relationship of technology to design to business for a very long time. It’s why I was drawn to design consulting in the first place.

Despite the fact that designers work for and on behalf of businesses (and I include non-profit, educational, and mission-driven organizations, but maybe not government) , there is a lot of misunderstanding about how design contributes value, especially with how fast technology appears to move and how much money floats around. This misunderstanding contributes to a lot of wasted effort, frustration, and harm.

I decided to take this on as a project in 2018 in order to help practicing digital designers gain more clarity and agency in their work, and maybe stop exacerbating harms while crowing about empathy. Then I decided to write a book about it, and well, between work and the pandemic. Here we are.

Since we’re publishing The Business Model Is the Grid ourselves, as we did with Ruined By Design, I can do whatever I want. And what I want to do is put the material on a website first. The plan is website over the course of summer 2024, and a book launch in the fall. Writing a book is terrible. It’s important to make it fun.

This is a website, not a blog. I’m going to add and revise the content in a manner that will probably seem arbitrary, rather than write posts in a linear fashion. So know before you quote. No rules! For me. The standard copyright stuff applies.

The maxims themselves are 95% stable (assigning a percentage is conventional, yet absurd). The order might change. Feel free to quote those. That’s what they’re for.

Excelsior!