Endorsements

By putting the empowerment of people at the center of strategy creation, Predictable Magic is as much a book about values and leadership as it is about design.  It can help executives find meaning and value in their work as they create meaning and value for their consumers. 

In Predictable Magic, Prahalad and Sawhney offer a design-based approach to new product development and product line resilience that bridges the gap between inspiration and implementation. Sustainable success in global product markets requires industry entrepreneurs – whether they serve as principals in start-ups or as corporate senior managers – to understand the crucial, increasing role of design. How can managers make the leap from personal taste – which everyone can claim – to free themselves to collaborate with designers to reliably match market opportunities to products that engage consumers as individuals? Predictable Magic offers both a framework and a process to answer this question, supported by proven results.

Predictable Magic places the consumer experience at the center of product design and marketing. Empathy and emotions, understood through the concept of persona bring a richer and fresher perspective on consumer-driven innovation than any other book I have seen. This book is a "must read" for anyone concerned with developing products and experiences consumers will love. It provides practical advice, frameworks, and tools to foster successful innovation, without ever falling in the recipe mode.

As the competitive playing field shifts from segments to clusters, consumers to co-creators, functionalities to user experiences, and product innovations to new categories, companies are challenged to relate ever more directly with the market’s new Big Kahuna—the whole person. How does a large, engineered business system engage an individual’s heart and mind and deliver unanticipated benefit? Predictable Magic offers a truly elegant answer. Prahalad and Sawhney’s EMPOWER framework is practicable, tested, and intuitive. Rely on it: the hours spent with this book will empower your strategy.

Predictable Magic provides a much-needed set of insights, case studies and methodologies for product design and development. In particular, the products and services being developed for customers in emerging markets must think about design and experience in the way described by Predictable Magic if they are to succeed and improve the lives of millions around the world.

Predictable Magic convincingly argues that design is intrinsic to successful product innovation in the consumer marketplace, requiring deep understanding of the emotional and psychological needs and experiential responses of diverse individual consumers, and early integration into the formulation of business strategy. Its engaging verbal and visual exposition draws from many disciplines and distills original insights from the compelling experience of well-chosen case studies into a systematic framework of general applicability in the process of strategic innovation.

Truly great designs are magical—they surprise us with their unexpected functionality, delight us with their thoughtful ergonomics and beguile us with their seductive aesthetics. While every company strives to create products and services that dazzle, few achieve this feat. Now, in Predictable Magic, Deepa Prahalad and Ravi Sawhney lay out a simple but powerful methodology for turning deep consumer insights into attention-grabbing, expectation-defying designs. If you’re looking to increase the “magic quotient” in the things your company makes and sells, you’ll want to dig into Predictable Magic.

Simple, profound and radical. Prahalad and Sawhney have turned received wisdom upside down by making customer emotion the starting point for innovation and growth. This book will change the way you think about design, business and strategy.

The natural fusion of psychology and creative disciplines enable a potent capability that will be critically important as we seek to better understand the demands of a diverse global population. Predictable Magic outlines an important framework for all product development professionals to capture and define the emotional wants and needs of a user.   Conventional data capture and analysis often lack the ability gain true insight into the human user. This book provides principles and approaches address those limitations.

In Predictable Magic, Prahalad and Sawhney lay out a novel and powerful approach for infusing a consumer perspective into innovation strategy. By providing a cohesive framework for understanding how and why consumers connect with products and services, including those of rivals, the book  provides designers, innovators and managers alike a lens through which to see which innovations can make your firm a hero in the marketplace.

Prahalad and Sawhney have written a  unusually useful book.  It is one of  the rare sources that goes beyond giving us another definition of   innovation.  With concrete examples linked to practical  principles they show us how to do it.

Predictable Magic starts with an unassailable and potentially discouraging premise: the relationship between what catches our attention and what wins our hearts is mysterious and complex. For companies hoping to use mountains of market research and spreadsheets of demographic data to create heart-fluttering projects, that’s a grim bit of news.
 
But not to fear! In this book, Sawheny and Prahalad divulge the alchemy behind some recent monster marketplace success stories.  What’s more, they promise that by following a few clear, concrete guidelines, any company can do the same. And then do it again. What they offer, in short, is a sort of Holy Grail: a handbook for replicable innovation.
 
Predictable Magic is invaluable for anyone seeking to use design to create products that are both highly successful – and greatly loved. And that’s magic, indeed.

Prahalad and Sawhney have powerfully articulated the conundrum of creating innovation around products and services. The failure of companies (and maybe even governments) to begin with the dynamic needs of human beings at all of their physical and emotional touch points.... and their social, economic and technology challenges ... is what leads to mediocre market performance.
 
Corporations must take the time to understand global human trends and how they impact industries.  Bravo!  The authors have crafted an understandable set of principles, cases and approaches to help us all navigate this more effectively.

Prahalad and Sawhney are among the very few designers who understand that meaning itself is a design -- that humans are not built into the environment via instinct.  Predictable Magic demonstrates an appreciation of humans, in all their authenticity, as beauty incarnate: full of asymmetry, paradox and irony.  Prahalad and Sawhney are exceptional product designers because they are creators of things that allow people to emotionally connect with what is latent in them and deeply personal.  A bigger gift no one can offer.

Prahalad and Sawhney shine a light on an important piece of the strategic puzzle: how to convert consumer emotions into successful designs. They provide a rigorous approach to guide innovation efforts from strategy creation through execution.  This is a must read for anyone who is trying to create a new product or develop a new business model. 

Prahalad and Sawhney have developed the most comprehensive book I have found on the emerging study of emotional connections between consumers and products.  The Psycho-Aesthetics concept is something that every person who has a leadership role in brand building, product development or innovation must absorb and understand.  Predictable magic is attainable and needs to be integrated into the business architecture of every business.

An indispensable resource for anyone concerned with creating value through innovation. The EMPOWER framework uniquely combines concepts of creativity, strategy, and psychology in a pragmatic and integrated approach. With concrete cases, it offers many timely insights that can be readily adopted by any organization striving to connect emotionally with its customers. Deepa and Ravi have de-mystified the black box of creativity.

Ravi Sawhney and Deepa Prahalad have opened a window into the alchemy of converting consumer insight into innovative and successful products. In Predictable Magic they provide a framework, a visual language and a vocabulary that can be shared amongst interdisciplinary product development teams thereby fostering collaboration and creativity, and speeding up the product development process. This is a valuable contribution to the art and science of creating breakthrough products and services.