Uncoded in academic jargon, authentic and bold, and most of all necessary, Paul Hartley's book delivers a roadmap to courageous creativity and offers an approach to the vision, complexity, and scale necessary to make qualified observations founded on rigor, sensitivity, and knowledge.

As the title suggests, commercial research is in need of radical change. There is an immutable truth in his observation that design and market research are not equipped for learning the semiotic system another person uses to understand the world around them, or their purposeful behavior. The lack of context and awareness is the root cause of the current commercial research's inability to produce reliable results. Hartley is endeavoring to make individuals understand that research into human behavior is much harder than advertised and also that it requires a specialist practice to achieve its intended purpose. What separates the people we call experts from those who are creative thinkers and skilled planners? Experts are people who know what to do. I find this Bill Maris (founder of Google Ventures) quote entirely appropriate in illustrating the point Hartley is trying to make in the book: “those of us who know what we are doing, know what we are doing!”

The essential components of Radical Human Centricity are framed by a structure that is both pragmatic and compelling. The book is a lively and fascinating the exploration of the transforming power of specialized knowledge and research. Radical Human Centricity unravels the intractable need for adaptive experimentation, human centricity, and learned human excellence in research. It suggests we can entirely dismiss the limitations of mere rationality in navigating the complexity of innovation through an absolute commitment to human-centeredness, specialized research guided by constant intellectual curiosity, focused creativity, and critical thinking.

The scope of Radical Human Centricity expands and develops into both a philosophical account and a practical manifesto, one that guides a radically new vision and the commitment to uncovering the skillful work that lies behind understanding people's motivations and actions. That framework supports a radically new form of critical reflection—one sorely needed in commercial practice. Its potential is astonishing: enabling the transformation of our worldview and giving businesses the knowledge to develop tools that can successfully process information about human behavior in the context of the development of products and services.