Design Leadership in Business: The Role of Non-Executive Directors and Corporate Design Consultants [1] (original) (raw)
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The Role of Design in Business (Editorial)
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A recent analysis commissioned by our colleagues at the Design Management Institute (DMI) concluded that design-driven businesses have economically outperformed Standard & Poor’s Top 500 companies by a staggering 228%. According to the business magazine Fast Company, who reflected on this study, investments in design, user experience, branding and creative advertising have clearly paid off for companies such as Apple, Coca-Cola, Ford, Herman Miller, IBM, Nike, P&G, Starbucks, Target, Walt Disney and Whirlpool. As a result, these companies have gained significant stock market advantage over their competitors. Fast Company’s interpretation of this study is that when there is a senior-level commitment to design leadership, design can be effectively used as an innovation resource and as a force for positive change. To us at Design for Business, this is merely a confirmation of what we already knew: that design is good for business. After all, the core theme of our conference and this subsequent publication is the role of design in business and its use as a strategic resource.
Design Leadership and Leadership by Design (Editorial)
The world experienced many innovations that, in retrospect, seem somehow so obvious or inevitable that they are soon no longer recognised as new. Like Shakespearean contributions to language, some even become the unrecognised preconditions of our further thoughts and experience. Perhaps it is a taste of this same hindsight bias that makes the emergence of ‘design leadership’ seem as obvious to some as it is surprising to others.
Frontline Roles for Design Leaders in the Multiverses of Business
Design management journal, 2012
to address major challenges anticipated over the next decade, what shifts might occur in perceptions of design and the roles they would be expected to fulfill? An extreme position is adopted for this exploration: that design is the single, unifying discipline that underlies all activities in business. Some of the critical factors underlying the challenges reported by design leaders (Topalian, 2011; see diagram below) are set out in the first part. The various manifestations of design leadership and design professionals' awareness of their key contributions are outlined in the second part. The final part distills, under separate challenges, aspects of frontline roles that design leaders can provide when invited to the top table in business. Significant benefits should accrue when design professionals are involved more extensively and are allowed to exploit their expertise to the full by leading through design. However, given that ultimate responsibility for the quality of design rests with business leaders, do they have what it takes to spark off design leaders so they achieve, together, outstanding results beyond expectation? ''The best way to predict the future is to create it.''-Peter Drucker Design: the key discipline at the heart of business All human endeavor to devise effective means to achieve desired ends involves design. The simplest definition of the discipline, quoted above in italics, highlights the fact that all organizations use design: decision making is essentially a design exercise, as are the creation, development, and running of businesses and society in general. This is a universal law; therefore, talk
How the Design Leadership and Strategic Design Drive New Value in Enterprises and Organizations
2022
Today's design has shifted from the original primary pursuit of appearance and function to processes and systems, creating new meanings for corporate strategies, products and services. Nowadays, enterprises are increasingly paying attention to the power of design, and regard design as the main innovation method and incorporate it into the organizations. Design began to be considered a key role at the top of large organizations. Although people recognize that design can bring good effects to enterprises and organizations, and there is growing interest in cultivating design thinking, what are the leaders who can lead enterprises, organizations and have design thinking? Their characteristics and how to formulate and plan strategic design still not fully elucidated. Therefore, this research uses related theories to understand the way of thinking and characteristics of design leaders, only in this way we formulate good strategic design for enterprises and organizations, and become an...
The role of company boards in design leadership
Engineering Management International, 1984
Nanagers r2eed to understand better the denlands of profess2onal des2gn n2anagen2en t rt desrgn standards are to be raised s2gnlfrcantly 2n mdustrsl It 2s 2nsuff2c2ent s2mply to pron2ote a greater awareness of the importance of design to prof2tab212ty or to encourage the use of better qualified designers whether speclahsts 2n eF2gmeerrng or mdustr2al design I'et an2rd all the talk about d eslgn-orchestrated by the professional et2grneerlng and mdustrlal des2gl2 bodies together with i~arious goilernmen t agencies there IS precious little 0~2 design management Moreocer. tlze role of companv boards 212 gutdmg, supporting and evaluatmg the design leaclersl22p of execu five managemet t 2s being ignored This paper explores tl2e varylr2g perceptions of design 2n Industry, !2ow the design functfon can be brought into focus by means of comprehensive corporate des2gn audits, and maps out the kev topics encompassed by the emerging d2sc2pkne of design management The roles of design management and responslblllty are dlfferentlated as are styles of design leadershIp Finally, a checklist of design respons26212t2es for company board members is proposed-respor2srbrlltres wh2ch complement those of executwe colleagues and will enable boards to plan a full part 2n taking their companres through tl2e next decade of radical change and beyond
Paradigm Shift: Report on the New Role of Design in Business and Society (Journal Article)
Corporate cultures' prevailing attitudes towards design have begun to shift. Financial companies and management consultancies now have design teams, and include “design” in their service portfolios. Large corporations are bolstering their in-house design capabilities, and appointing designers to executive roles. Venture capitalist firms and startups increasingly recognize the value of including designers in the early stages of business development. Even global organizations and international foundations now list design on their agendas. A paradigm shift is taking place in the field of design. This study examines some of the latest corporate investments in design, and reflects on what this phenomenon means for the wider field of design. The focus of this study is on the key trend indicators that are defining the current landscape of design, and its changing role in business and society.
Design Managament Institute: Review (internet), 2022
An increasing number of organizations invest in growing their in-house design teams and extend the influence and ownership of design to the executive level. Leading the design function of an organization is a complex task. If the design function is not effectively led, however, it can result in suboptimal organizational outcomes. This, ultimately, impacts the credibility of and investment in the design function going forward. To ignite the right design leadership to address current and future challenges and opportunities, design leaders need to create and foster a design function that is performing at the highest level. Furthermore, design leaders will have to adapt their leadership style to the specific challenges and opportunities they are presented with. This article, will briefly elaborate on how to do so, based on our research into effective design leadership.
This research investigates the role of design as a ‘functional leader’1 in multinational organisations, to drive innovation successfully at a strategic level. It involved a detailed case study of the innovation process, and practices within Philips Design, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, where design is a key function within the company but not yet recognised as a leading strategic discipline. Philips Design wanted design research to build an integrated map of its actual practices and correlate these with other corporate innovation practices, to help establish strategic recognition for their value. The doctoral challenge was to explicate the process and determine whether the findings have generic capacity to support the role of design as a leading functional discipline. The investigation integrates an iterative loop of; abductive reasoning of design thinking and inductive reasoning of management thinking in an action research cycle. The case study was an empirical enquiry, where the researcher became a ‘participatory observer’ at Philips Design, conducting one-on-one interviews for data collection and refining their analysis using a Delphi Technique. The contribution to knowledge has been generated by combining these research methods to represent data in a logical manner using visual mapping techniques to produce an explicitly defined ‘design innovation process map’ for Philips Design. Comparison with three other multinational organisations explored how each perceives the contribution of design and the different roles it plays in their organisation. Triangulation with a third party expert was also used to validate the findings. The correlation of the research with literature in the field explored the relationship between human behaviour, organisational culture and business innovation cycles and took this an incremental step forward by visually illustrating the conceptual relationship between different theories. The focus became understanding the reasons for the differences between the thinkers and the practitioners in a design team. Significantly, this led to it validating the theory of ‘Design Driven Innovation’ by Roberto Verganti (2009). The study contributes value to his theory of innovation by highlighting four gaps in its application in multinational organisations and demonstrates that design can share the role of innovation leadership with other important functions only if it has an explicit process that aligns with organisational brand values and communicates the value generated by design effectively to the wider team. Therefore, whilst the research has not been able to confirm whether design can lead an effective innovation process at a strategic level, rather it needs to share this role in multinational organisations, it has identified the major reason for this as the differences between design team thinkers trying to find viable options for the future and practitioners trying to defend the core business in their organisation, resulting in a gap between strategy and operation. The research has confirmed the conditions for design to act as a leading functional discipline and provided design practitioners with tools that can help in strategic decision-making. It is hoped this research will inspire design researchers to carry out further study on the topic to improve and develop knowledge and competency to support the strategic role of design as a leading functional discipline in organisations. Also, that business, strategy and marketing researchers will be inspired to generate theories that could link the strategic role of the design innovation process to strategies in their own fields. Finally, the research identifies the need for quantitative research to explain the qualitative conceptual relationships it has depicted between designer behaviour and organisational culture in the different innovation cycles that exist in multinational organisations.
Diversity, Polarity, Inclusivity: Finding Balance in Design Leadership
2012
Design consultancy studios of the 1950s have more in common with those of today than would first seem. The studios of Raymond Loewy, Norman Bel Geddes and Henry Dreyfuss, amongst others, toiled to make everyday objects more functional, usable and aesthetic. However, they were also especially visionary for their size and diversity: cross-disciplinary practice was the norm, and collaborations involved a breadth of expert employees, such as engineers, technicians, and human factors specialists. Henry Dreyfuss, in particular, was prophetic in his approach of ‘total’ design integration, where his studio became involved at every level of the client’s organization. In 1955 he published Designing for People, a book in which he underscored the proximity between design, commerce and management. Stressing crossover in the design discipline, Dreyfuss quipped that the successful designer must be: “part engineer, part businessman, part salesman, part public-relations man, artist, and almost, it seems at times, Indian chief” Designers today might find resonance in Dreyfuss’s words. It seems that, propelled by a number of confluent market and societal changes, design is currently in a renewed period of ascendency and expansion in its application in business. Having consistently been growing in value over recent years, the designer is again highly influential in new product development (NPD). Over the last five years, I have been engaged in a research project examining this change. From talking to designers and design managers at four high profile, international product design consultancy studios in Europe and the US, amongst the biggest in the world, I have charted the evolving leadership role of consultancy design in the NPD process. The consultancies I studied have all internationalized from modest beginnings. All have been successful in growing a loyal client base. Their work, used by millions of people, has been recognized and awarded by the international design community. The ideas presented here are therefore considered to be indicative of design leadership best practice.