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," "Hypertrack: Setting New Standards for Client Service" and "Performance-Based Initiatives: 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.

James P. Cramer, Hon. AIA, Hon. IIDA, CAE, is the Chairman/CEO of The Greenway Group, a management consulting and research firm based in Washington, D.C. and Atlanta. He is the author of Design plus Enterprise, Seeking a New Reality in Architecture and Design, editor of the monthly newsletter Design Intelligence, and co-editor of the annual Almanac of Architecture & Design. He is adjunct professor of architecture at the University of Hawaii, Manoa and co-chair of the Design Futures Council. The former executive vice president/CEO of The American Institute of Architects in Washington D.C., he has degrees from Northern State University, the University of St. Thomas, and postgraduate studies at the Wharton School of Business. He lives in Dunwoody, Georgia, with his wife Corinne Aaker Cramer.

Scott Simpson, FAIA, is a principal of The Stubbins Associates in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A senior fellow and co-chair of the Design Futures Council, a think-tank based in Washington, D.C., he is a frequent speaker at seminars and conferences and has published more than 70 articles dealing with issues of innovation in the design professions. He is also an editor-at-large of DesignIntelligence. He has been a design critic at Yale University and the University of Wisconsin and a guest lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. His academic background includes degrees from both Harvard and Yale. He lives in a house of his own design in Carlisle, Massachusetts, with his wife Nancy Kuziemski.