• Make It New

  • The History of Silicon Valley Design
  • By: Barry N. Katz
  • Narrated by: Sean Ptratt
  • Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (29 ratings)

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Make It New  By  cover art

Make It New

By: Barry N. Katz
Narrated by: Sean Ptratt
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Publisher's summary

California's Silicon Valley is home to the greatest concentration of designers in the world: corporate design offices at flagship technology companies and volunteers at nonprofit NGOs; global design consultancies and boutique studios; research laboratories and academic design programs. Together they form the interconnected network that is Silicon Valley. Apple products are famously "designed in California", but, as Barry Katz shows in this first-ever, extensively illustrated history, the role of design in Silicon Valley began decades before Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak dreamed up Apple in a garage.

Offering a thoroughly original view of the subject, Katz tells how design helped transform Silicon Valley into the most powerful engine of innovation in the world. From Hewlett-Packard and Ampex in the 1950s to Google and Facebook today, design has provided the bridge between research and development, art and engineering, technical performance and human behavior. Katz traces the origins of all of the leading consultancies - including IDEO, frog, and Lunar - and shows the process by which some of the world's most influential companies came to place design at the center of their business strategies. At the same time, universities, foundations, and even governments have learned to apply "design thinking" to their missions.

Drawing on unprecedented access to a vast array of primary sources and interviews with nearly every influential design leader - including Douglas Engelbart, Steve Jobs, and Don Norman - Katz reveals design to be the missing link in Silicon Valley's ecosystem of innovation.

©2015 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (P)2015 Gildan Media LLC
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

Critic reviews

"Barry Katz's history is a delight for experts and accidental readers alike, as it touches upon so many icons and necessary fixtures of everyday life." (Paola Antonelli, senior curator, Architecture & Design, and director, Research & Development, The Museum of Modern Art)

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Great book

Overall great book and insights into design and how it shaped the Silicon Valley. Highly recommend for anyone interested in product design.

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