In the crowded world of innovation methodologies, few books arrive that truly reset the conversation. Click: How to Make What People Want by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky is one of those rare contributions. Best known for their earlier bestseller Sprint, the authors built their reputation on giving teams a proven playbook for rapidly prototyping and testing ideas. But in this latest work, they do something even more valuable: they acknowledge the limits of the sprint model itself and offer a way to address them.

Where Sprint assumed you already had the right problem defined, Click asks the harder question: How do you know what problem is worth sprinting on in the first place? That is the contribution of the Foundation Sprint—a discovery-oriented process designed to ensure your efforts align with real user needs and organizational priorities before the intense focus of a sprint begins. It’s about making sure your team’s work doesn’t just move quickly but actually clicks with the people it’s intended to serve.

Why This Book Matters

Every leader, manager, and entrepreneur has felt the frustration of running at full speed toward the wrong finish line. Traditional project kickoffs often devolve into endless meetings, political maneuvering, or PowerPoint theater. The result is that many teams start building without truly knowing if they are solving the right problem. Knapp and Zeratsky’s Foundation Sprint cuts through this noise.

This book matters because it acknowledges the uncomfortable truth: speed alone is not enough. In fact, without clarity and alignment, speed can amplify waste. By slowing down at the beginning, teams can move faster later, with confidence that their work is on target.

The Broader Conversation in Design & Creative Problem-Solving

What makes Click compelling is how it fits into the larger evolution of creative problem-solving methods. Just as Management Design Thinking has expanded traditional design thinking to include team-building, sense-making, and alignment in the early stages, the Foundation Sprint plays a parallel role. Both approaches recognize that innovation doesn’t start with ideas—it starts with people. It starts with ensuring a diverse, cross-functional team shares a common understanding of the problem and the user before jumping into solution mode.

In this sense, Click is not a replacement for design thinking or sprint methodologies, but a missing puzzle piece—a preparatory stage that increases the odds of meaningful, lasting success.

Key Takeaways

1. The Foundation Sprint: A step-by-step process to validate whether a problem is worth solving, ensuring projects are rooted in user needs.
2. Clarity Before Speed: Challenges the myth that faster is always better by showing how focus and alignment save time in the long run.
3. Stories from the Field: Real-world case studies from Google, Nike, Slack, and beyond illustrate how the method works across industries.
4. A More Honest Conversation: Knapp and Zeratsky’s willingness to critique their own earlier frameworks makes this book refreshingly transparent and practical.
5. A Complementary Lens: Positioned alongside design thinking, agile, and management design thinking, Click doesn’t compete—it strengthens the ecosystem of creative methods.

Final Thoughts

Click is a reframing of where innovation begins. By acknowledging the limitations of the sprint model and proposing a front-end process of discovery, Knapp and Zeratsky have filled a gap that many practitioners have felt but struggled to articulate.

For executives, entrepreneurs, and innovation leaders, the message is clear: 

Don’t just run sprints. 

Lay the foundation that ensures your work resonates, solves the right problems, and creates solutions people actually want. 

Only then will your efforts truly “click.”