What we know (and what we need
to know) about the management of
design in the 21st Century
Professor Alison Rieple
University of Westminster
11th February 2009
Design management is relatively
under-conceptualised
• Lacks strong theoretical framework
– c.f. marketing or even branding theory
– over-reliant on illustrative case studies
• Very little cross-sectional, quantitative, research
– needs more, more academic, journals /
outlets
Key business developments in the
21st century
• The increasing economic importance of
developing countries (BRIC)
– and therefore the declining role of developed
countries?
• Location of innovation / new product
development
– Open innovation (open design?)
– Outsourcing
• Low cost or to the location of expertise?
Key business developments in the 21st
century (contd.)
• The development of regional economic
specialisms
– Korea as a ‘design hub’
– product innovation in China
– fashion design in India
• Adding value in new ways
– business model / organisation / value chain design
– service design
How does design affect people
• How can service design be used to
influence consumer emotions
– customer touch-points
– design of staff contact / movement /
location
• How can workplace design be used to
influence employee behaviour
– motivation, physical movement, knowledge
sharing , creating fun (humour -> creativity)
How does design affect people (contd.)
• Relationship between design attributes and
consumer affect / behaviour not well understood
– in one survey of products that consumers ‘had to have’,
70% said it was because of the design
• international implications?
– photo-elicitation methods comparing shoe retailers international
windows’ design
• demographic implications?
– with younger people (18 to 29), the influence of design was even
more pronounced
• The attractor value of aesthetics
– (Fashion) design elements increasingly being adopted by
non fashion companies – toothpaste, chocolate boutiques,
hotels
Very few studies have assessed the
economic value-added of design
• Brand consultancies have placed large values on
‘brands’
– but are consumers loyal to the ‘brand’ or to the product?
– therefore, is brand value really design value?
• One or two honourable exceptions
– Design Council survey: design tops the list of key success
factors in 16% of firms. Among “rapidly growing”
businesses 47% rank it first.
– Hertenstein, Platt, and Veryzer correlated industrial design
effectiveness and performance
What makes designers powerful
• Strategic contingency theory says that power
accrues to those units / individuals able to
increase the organisation’s effectiveness
– therefore what specific designer behaviours /
attributes are most effective in what context?
The structure of the design function
• Are there correlations between design status /
location and organisational performance
– Apple, Sony, and Samsung design directors report
to the CEO – is this a coincidence?
• What is the most effective structure for the
design function for specific organisation
typologies
– Defenders / prospectors/ analysers
– industry type
– In-house or outsourced?
Design knowledge
• How is design knowledge transferred
– role of design clusters
– Design-driven innovation (as opposed to userdriven innovation) needs to access broader social
trends
• how is this best done
• How do design fashions become mainstream
• Role of cultural intermediaries in setting a
value on particular aesthetic
We know that designers are different
from many other organisational
groups
• Innovative problem-solving styles
– what coping behaviours do designers use
• We know that designers are often not well
integrated into organisational decision-making
– so what do the most effective designers do
• language
• micro-political behaviours
• appearance
Adaptors and Innovators
• Adaptors provide solutions that depend on
generally-agreed paradigms, and therefore are
more readily accepted by most.
– Innovate within rules
– Concerned to make existing things better
• Innovators’ ideas are less closely related to the
group’s prevailing paradigms and consequently
are more strongly resisted.
– Break rules
– Not overly concerned with what has gone before
Comparison KAI occupational group scores
• Branch
Bank
Managers,
Civil
Manufacturing Managers, Plant
Machine Superintendents, Production
Accounts Supervisors, Maintenance
Programmers, Cost accountants
• Nurses
• General population
• Managers generally
• Teachers
• R& D professionals
• Personnel
• Finance
• Marketing
• Planning
• Design managers
• R&D Managers (Special Project Teams)
Servants,
Managers,
Managers,
Engineers,
80-90
92
95
96
97
101
103
105
106
110
111
112-115
Finally …. design and management
• “Management resembles design because it,
too, is the process by which we devise courses
of action aimed at changing existing situations
into preferred ones; or in other words, the
process by which we initiate change in manmade things. If this hypothesis is true, then it
will become the meeting point between the
two domains”