Surprisingly not all organisations are engaged with design at the boardroom level

Given that consumers are more design and brand aware than ever before and purchasing decisions are based on social, economic and cultural factors influenced by design; its essential that design is managed in a way that can provide deeper value and competitive advantage.

In essence, design management is a core business function that can link design with strategic business issues and processes, in turn providing greater business success.

Having advantages over other organisational disciplines, design management can help companies to collaboratively respond to business challenges.

Recently the UK’s Design Council carried out research with a group of companies who use design across their organisations; Herman Miller, Trunki, Virgin Atlantic and more. Amongst their proven key findings was that “Design is most powerful when culturally embedded. It works best when it has strong support in the organisation, especially from Senior Management….it can add value to any organisation and benefit manufacturing and service based organisations, small medium or large”.

Leading Business by Design

An even greater impact can be achieved through the connected inclusion of design management across all functions. Some key areas of benefit can be seen below:

• Market differentiation through design, corporate identity and environmental design.
• Contemporary issues such as CSR, technology, innovation and brand.
• Processes, reviewing and redesigning can provide cost reduction and increased customer satisfaction
• Competitive advantage through measuring the effectiveness of design and continually striving to improve it, including cost reductions.

Design is intrinsically connected with business and if managed effectively from inception through strategy, process to implementation it can provide greater benefit to every organisation and every employee.