The power of Design captured is an insightful book summary by D Shivakumar; Chairman & CEO, Pepsico India Region

1. Design to Grow
David Butler and Linda Tischler

2. David Butler works as VP
innovation for Coke and Linda is
the editor at fast company

3. For over a century, coca cola has
used design to scale to over 200
countries and build 17 billion
dollar brands, partner with more
than 20 million customers and sell
close to 2 billion products a day.

4. Over the last decade it has
struggled like any other large
company to use design to create
agility.

5. Disruption is both a threat and an
opportunity today. It is not
enough to be big, every company
needs both scale and agility to
win.

6. Design can create both scale and
agility

7. Systems thinking is a capability
that looks at the whole and not a
static snapshot

8. The non alcoholic ready to drink
industry has consistently grown
fast and coke needed a way to use
design to stay relevant in this
space. My task was to do this.

9. This company has 250 bottling
companies, 80,000 suppliers and
20 million retail customers, How
do you design this company? It
has to let go of an approach which
had worked for it for long.

10. Coca cola sold coke for seventy
years in one pack at one price. In
the eighties they decided to be a
total beverage company and that
started the complexity journey.

11. Designing on purpose refers to
design that is strategic, with a
clear connection to growth
strategy, design that creates scale
and agility and inspires people.

12. We started with branding and
communication and then moved
to packaging and equipment.
What made the difference was
opening up design to the
company, to everyone.

13. Around the globe, coke owns 100
water brands. Creating
competitive advantage is an on
going challenge

14. Its easy to know the difference
between good and bad design

15. Design is about intentionally
connecting things to solve
problems
To understand the value of design,
we need to connect and visible
and invisible parts of design

16. A system is a set of elements and
behaviors that connect to do one
thing.

17. Coke Japan launched ILOHAS a
water brand, tapping into the
recycling passion in Japan.
Launched as a choose, drink, twist
and recycle message, the message
went viral and grew the brand
double digit.

18. The ability of a great company is
to keep its core value proposition
while scaling up the business.

19. Scale is the ability to increase
quantity without sacrificing
quality or profit.

20. To achieve scale , everything must
be simplified and standardized
with the least amount of friction.

21. You must understand what makes
you brand unique. You then need
to create a passion around those
details.

22. Most of the time, great design
means getting the details right. All
details interconnect to deliver the
key to quality.

23. Standardization helps a company
plan, resource, predict and
ultimately grow. This creates
massive efficiency. It creates a
common language and clear
direction

24. Two entrepreneurs from
Tennessee Benjamin franklin and
Joseph Whitehead wanted to start
a company for people to drink
Coke. Asa Candler the coke owner
sold them the rights for 1 dollar.
This worked and the franchise
business model was born.

25. In 1886, John pemberton the
creator of Coke sent his nephew
Lewis Newman to Jacob’s
pharmacy in Atlanta to test the
formulation. It took a year to
arrive at a formulation that
consumers liked.

26. Coke account Robinson was used
to writing a spencerian script. He
felt that this script would
differentiate coca cola from other
drinks and this script was
standardized in 1923.

27. The bottlers were eager to distinguish
the coke bottle from competition. So,
Thomas, the lawyer from
Chattanooga who had bought the
bottling rights for one dollar said ‘ we
need a bottle a blind person can also
feel and recognize in the dark as a
coke bottle” the famous design was
born.

28. Coke was designed to be served at
36 degrees Fahrenheit or 2.2
degrees Celsius. Internally this is
called the perfect serve.

29. For seventy years coke was sold at
a nickel. Coke started taking up
prices after 1959.Between 1887
and 1920, 10 % of all product was
sampled.

30. No one can coast in todays world.
Evert industry is ripe for
disruption, even destruction.

31. When something is complicated
,it’s difficult to understand. When
something is complex, it has many
different connected parts.
Being complicated is a bad thing,
being complex.

32. A shift in strategy in 2001 created
complexity. For coke, standardized
coca cola formulation was very
good, however, in juices and other
categories , people want a recipe ,
not formula. Not something coke
understood easily

33. In juices people prefer different
tastes, orange juice can be
anything from bitter to sweet.

34. The way coca cola was designed
hurt growth and created
confusion.

35. Coca cola used the process of
mind maps to manage this
transition.Mindmap gets everyone
in a room, puts all issues on the
table, groups the related issues
and then connects everything.

36. In today’s world, the mandate to
pay attention to the crowd, not
the experts, and to focus on
learning, not education, has never
been more essential.

37. You have to create value for your
suppliers, for your customers,
your consumers, your community.
You have to create value for the
eco system.

38. A startup is a temporary
organization designed to search
for a repeatable and scalable
business model.

39. By designing for agility, companies
can learn faster and become
smarter, which reduces the risk of
being disrupted.

40. Failing fast really means learning
fast. Companies that are slow to
learn can never fail fast.

41. Dieter Rams, the designer at
Braun for three decades summed
up design philosophy as “ less, but
better”

42. One of the things you need to
learn is to get started , not to
perfect everything from the start.

43. Pivoting is when a company
abruptly changes its strategy.
Altering a fundamental part of its
business model, without changing
its vision.

44. In 2005, coke identity was in a
mess and then “ the coke side of
life “ was launched. The designer
looked back in time , saw a can
that was bold and simple and that
became the key.
Core brands need a timeless
quality.

45. If you can move learning wisdom
and knowledge to the front line in
your company faster than
competition, you will win.

46. Coke focused on empowering
women in africa via the modular
distribution centers. Today a
woman makes 20,000 $ s or more
with this

47. There is one common them for
winning companies , big or small, -
FOCUS. Without focus people and
companies waste resources, time
and talent.

48. Starting a business is easy, scaling
a business is tough.

49. Design
• Design can visualize strategy
• Design can be the differentiator
• Design can connect
• We need to design on purpose
• IBM uses design to focus its strategy
• Apple uses design to differentiate
• Nike uses design to build reputation
• VW uses design to build culture