Designing Profits : Creative Business Strategies for Design Practices

A successful design practice requires principals and staff who are creative, technically proficient, and financially savvy. Designing Profits focuses on the last component—the one that is so elusive for many architects, engineers, and construction professionals—the business aspects of practice. Not an ordinary book on practice issues or finance, Designing Profits explains the application of design thinking to guide wise business decisions. It is indeed possible to be as creative in establishing and operating a practice as in designing and constructing a building. The book offers comprehensive guidance and objective tools for design professionals to reap financial rewards from their practices, and to discover innovative strategies to become entrepreneurial and implement creative practice models. An extended case study is woven throughout the book. Witness the trials and tribulations of Michelangelo & Brunelleschi Architects as they engage problematic clients, tight project budgets and schedules, low fees and insufficient profits, marketing issues, quirky staff, technology upgrades, and growth, among other difficult challenges. This mythical firm, a composite of several real-life practices, navigates through these various dilemmas, providing readers with insights into superior financial management and a reimagined services portfolio.