Or, is it both?

In creating a new MBA program in Design Strategy this past year, I have found that one of the most difficult ideas for people to wrap their heads around is that the “business” we refer to isn’t “how to run a design company” but, instead, “how to interface with organizations in order for design to be more influential in business strategy.”

For a the last 10 years or so, business and strategy issues have been creeping into the design experience more and more. While BusinessWeek extols the merits of design to the business world, designers-turned-strategists have been proclaiming the need for designers to better understand how organizations work (at the highest levels) if they hope to have the influence they’ve always desired. Coming from both directions, the meeting in the middle can be powerful.

When designers better understand business processes and issues across the organization, and when they can speak the language of their other business peers, they can better communicate customer needs, strategy, and design-based innovation. Likewise, when business leaders from all parts of an organization better understand meaningful, strategic innovation, they have more comfort dealing with the often ambiguous and fuzzy process it requires. What companies truly need is to strike a balance between the need to achieve operational efficiencies and, at the same time, make a place for free-thinking to drive new, appropriate, and meaningful solutions that have never been seen before. This isn’t easy–especially for someone who may have been brought-up on the idea that design is merely appliqué or decoration you add at the end to “spruce-up” a product or that it’s something trendy and ethereal that can’t really be planned strategically.

This is what is meant by the term Design Strategy: the use of design processes, perspectives, and tools to create truly meaningful, sustainable, and successful innovation across a variety of design disciplines, including industrial, interaction, visual, experience, and fashion design. (more…)