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It is important to think smart and read smart. Helen Walters, the editor of BusinessWeek, has already done half of the work for us, by outlining the 19 best innovation and design books written in 2009. Our top 10 list highlights the best of the best in innovation and design thinking.

What do contemporary T-shirt graphics, Brooklyn-based design companies, and animated short films have in common? For one thing, they’ve each grabbed the attention of Helen Walters, editor of Innovation and Design at BusinessWeek Magazine. Helen has used each of these diverse topics to illustrate the ability innovative design techniques have to change the world around us.

Recently, Helen has shifted her focus from producing original work to publicizing and critiquing the work of others. Her survey of the 19 best innovation and design books written in 2009 is a helpful guide for anyone looking to become more informed on this year’s innovation innovations, for lack of a better phrase. 10 of these books stood out to us as especially interesting or unique:

1. Change by Design by Tim Brown – a persuasive argument for the necessity of maintaining a well-functioning design department to succeed in tomorrow’s business climate.
2. The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage by Roger Martin – a practically applicable guide to creating and maintaining a quality design department written by one of the most respected people in the field.
3. A Fine Line: How Design Strategies are Shaping the Future of Business by Hartmut Esslinger – Frog Design’s founder’s personal entertaining and informative anecdotes of his time spent at companies including Apple, Disney, and SAP.
4. Design-Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean by Roberto Verganti – a revolutionary look at the field that focuses on companies’ ability to manipulate markets by using innovative design to alter customer expectations.
5. I Miss My Pencil by Martin Bone and Kara Johnson – an exercise in innovative design itself, this uniquely formatted book emphasizes the non-traditional aspects of the field in a very interesting and accessible manner
6. Discovery-Driven Growth: A Breakthrough Process to Reduce Risk and Seize Opportunity by Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian C. MacMillan – an executive’s handy-book to implementing innovative designs without creating excessive risk written by professors from Columbia and Wharton.
7. The Age of the Unthinkable, Why the New World Constantly Surprises Us and What We Can Do About It by Joshua Cooper Ramo – a survey of disruptive innovation as it has manifested itself in the business community and the world at large, emphasizing its inevitability and potential to be positive.
8. Innovation Tournaments: Creating and Selecting Exceptional Opportunities by Christian Terwiesch and Karl Ulrich – two Wharton professors’ academic look at the way innovation can be encouraged and managed through the use of certain business practices.
9. Clever: Leading Your Smartest, Most Creative People by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones – a persuasion piece arguing that brilliant, difficult people are going to be the primary source of innovative and economic growth in tomorrow’s economy.
10. Glimmer: How Design Can Transform Your Life and Maybe Even the World by Warren Berger – a look at individuals that the author sees as important to changing the field of innovative design, and consequently the world, that pays special attention to designer Bruce Mao

More Info:

• http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/12/1216_best_design_innovation_books/1.htm
• http://www.helenwalters.com

Tags: 2009, book, BusinessWeek, design, Editor, Helen Walters, innovation, top 10