There is a fundamental conflict in Design Management (DM), and it threatens to get out of hand unless both sides agree to sit down and sort it out immediately. The conflict is at the very core of Design Management, involving its definition: is DM about “fitting design into the management paradigm” or “design as a (new) paradigm for management”?
Corporations that have deployed design tend to define DM as “managing design effectively and efficiently”. Their priority is to develop a framework for the management of design tasks, so as to achieve the best possible results. This view is echoed by several institutions, who regard design as an under-exploited competitive edge for business, and evangelize the need to bring it into the ‘mainstream’ management fold.
The “fitting design into management” view is perhaps best exemplified by the Design Management Institute (DMI), that “seeks to heighten awareness of design as an essential part of business strategy”, and outlines the following as its research priorities: Design Performance, Design Process and Design Awareness.
The draft National Design Policy being tabled by the Government of India also conforms to this position, positioning design as a “new engine of economic & industrial growth”, and wants India to “become the hub for export and outsourcing of designs”.
All the above definitions anticipate bringing design & innovation into conventional industrial & management paradigms. Let’s call these the “DMI cluster” of definitions.
On the other hand, there is a growing number of organisations – corporate and non-corporate – that are departing from conventional hierarchical and command/control models of management, opting instead for an egalitarian, entrepreneurial and flexible structure. Typically, these organisations evolve around an innovative idea or concept, and are geared for impermanence and change rather than permanence and continuity. Popularised during the Silicon Valley boom, this organisational model has gradually moved closer and closer to the mainstream, evangelized by another set of institutions.
The Institute of Design at Stanford, in its vision, states “We want the d.school to be a place for Stanford students and faculty in engineering, medicine, business, the humanities and education to learn design thinking and work together to solve big problems in a human-centred way.” They say, “We believe design thinking is a catalyst for innovation and bringing new things into the world.” They also say, “The prototypes produced in the d.school will include objects, software, experiences, performances and organisations.”
Bruce Nussbaum writes in Businessweek: “All the B-school-educated managers you hire won't automatically get you the outside-the-box thinking you need to build new brands—or create new experiences for old brands.” He quotes Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto as saying, “businesspeople will have to become more ‘masters of heuristics’ than ‘managers of algorithms’”, and that “design skills and business skills are converging”.
The NextDesign Leadership Institute says, “the simple truth is that design is increasingly being left out of the up-front thinking and strategic portion of complex problem solving situations.” NextD’s agenda is to redefine design as a “leadership” discipline, saying that conventionally, designers are taught to master tools and “framed problems” but not to master “unframed problems”. In their recent online journal, they quote Dr Ralph Bruder of the Zollverein School in Germany saying, “The purpose of the Zollverein School is to create a platform for the mutual exchange between the often separated fields of business and design... What makes the Zollverein School very special and unique is that it is neither a business school nor a design school, but rather an institution where those different disciplines define a space of mutual respect.”
These views point to something that is radical and disruptive, rather than incremental and conservative. They imply a discontent with the status quo, and suggest design as a knowledge paradigm for leading and managing. Let’s call these the “Stanford cluster” of definitions.
Are these two viewpoints as opposed to each other as it may seem? Or are they, in fact, two points on the same continuum?
The DMI cluster is derived from the traditional linear and mechanistic model of the world, industry and management. The Stanford cluster is derived from the new-age non-linear networks and systems models. Hence, both these views can be located quite clearly on a timeline, but what is pertinent is both repesent approaches to bringing about growth and development, because the former converges around the principle of continuity and incremental change, whilst the latter converges around innovation and radical change—and both these principles can and have co-existed simultaneously at all times.
The DMI cluster represents a left-brain attitude towards risk and ambiguity: measuring, modelling, programming and replicating. The Stanford cluster represents a more right-brain attitude that is more comfortable with complexity, unpredictability and ambiguity: empathising, intuiting, decontrol and improvising. Martin’s terms come to mind again: “algorithm” and “heuristics”.
What I find extremely interesting is that the DMI cluster conforms to the classical ‘taught MBA’ approach to management, whilst the Stanford cluster is closer to an ‘innovator/entrepreneur’ approach. It does need to be said, however, that the latter approach intrinsically embodies and is far more amenable to innovation and risk-taking than the former.
Interestingly, a DMI paper highlights a disconnect between designers and design managers, exemplified by the following quotes from design managers: “I deliver quality work in very short timeframes” and “I work with unrealistic budgets”—which reveal the dominance of a “managerial” paradigm, versus the following from designers: “They don’t understand good design” or “They don’t involve us early in the process” or “They don’t understand how much time we need”, which reveal the dominance of a “creative” paradigm. The author diagnoses this as a simple failure in communication, blaming the designers: “What is it about the design profession that we are not good communicators, for heaven’s sake!”. However, the real reason for the disconnect could well be the divergent paradigms at play.
In informal discussions between the author and B-school professors, there was consensus that both design and management are eventually about problem-solving—and that designers approach it from the right-brain perspective, and managers from the left-brain. There was also agreement that entrepreneurs seem to balance the two pretty effectively, and that successful entrepreneurs were, as a rule, far more creative, ingenious and innovative than comparable MBA corporate leaders.
Ask any designer or design firm about their greatest regret and it will invariably include a wonderful design proposal that was rejected by their client. Similarly, their greatest pleasure would include a wonderful design proposal that was accepted by their client. When facing rejection, designers feel particularly upset when management theory & jargon is used to reject their proposals, and can better accept an entrepreneur-client’s intuitive and hunch-based rejection. This again points us to two approaches towards decision-making: the formal and taught form, and the informal and learnt form. I believe here lies the structural source of the conflict within DM: a clash of two knowledge-systems, and the dominance of one that is perceived to be “objective”, “factual” and “accurate”.
The confusion stems from conflicting definitions of the term “design” itself. On the one hand, it is “considered in the context of the applied arts, engineering, architecture and other such creative endeavours”, while it is also used intermittently with process, planning and strategy on the other. The former implies a studio- or lab-based artistic, inventive and creative activity, while the latter implies a more managerial activity, grounded in logic and industry.
These apparently conflicting definitions correspond closely with the classic “Innovation Life-cycle Model” that spans three stages: the “Fluid, Emerging” phase where innovation is characterised by “radically new products, with frequent major changes; high technical uncertainty but broad R&D focus”, followed by the “Transitional, Growth” phase where innovation involves “gradual increase in process innovation; at least one stable, high-volume product design emerges”, and the “Maturity” phase where innovation is “mostly process innovation, aimed at cost reduction; incremental product innovations”.
The challenge before Design Management, then, is: where in the innovation life-cycle does it choose to locate itself? NextDesign, in fact, indicts designers for failing to equip themselves to perform at the cutting-edge of the innovation cycle, and acquiring mastery over “unframed problems”.
I will now attempt to draw from all three fields—management, design and entrepreneurship—in an attempt to synthesize a model for “design management” that could open up exciting future areas for research and growth, for all three disciplines.
In conventional management, first-phase innovation is accorded a marginal space because the dominant organisational function involves extended production, marketing and delivery of a basket of products or services. However, in the unfolding techno-competitive scenario, it is becoming apparent that organisations will have to innovate continuously in order to survive and production may need to be recast from monolithic, unchanging and high-volume “mass production” model to agile, rapid-turnaround and low-volume “mass customisation” models.
Citing his 2003 experience of printing business cards online, consultant Jack Aaronson explains how it revealed “all the hallmarks of mass customisation”:
Citing the examples of Dell Computer and Renault, the Economist says they “make extensive use of BTO (‘build-to-order’) systems, shortening delivery times and trimming work-in-progress… And that means turning a production-push industry into a demand-pull one.” The drastic increase of unpredictability and risk in such a scenario is self-evident, as is the need for continuous innovation.
These examples confirm that “personalized marketing” and “mass customisation” are no longer dreams, and it’s just a matter of time before someone introduces “personalized innovation” as well.
If the current organisational buzzword is the “learning organisation”, the next big thing could well be the “innovating organisation”. In such an organisation, innovation will be no longer confined to the “lab”, but percolate into every aspect of work, equipping individuals and teams to review their function, output and value addition, assess the scope for improvement by direct interactions with consumers & people at large, and undertake minor and major innovations to constantly remain competitive and ahead of the pack. In the real sense, innovation will become “a way of life”.
Conventional management models are not geared to deliver in such circumstances, and it is here that the “science” of design is now being acknowledged as showing the way ahead. Designers are trained to solve problems in an environment of total ambiguity, uncertainty and high risk—yet, with a level of predictable success. Their methods are highly qualitative, involving the use of intuition, subjectivity, insight and provable only after the fact – a form of tacit knowledge that has historically been devalued, when compared against conventional forms of knowledge that are quantitative, explicit and provable before the fact.
Design Management, then, can seize the initiative and strive to develop design into a full-blown “science” on its own terms, instead of attempting to fit it into the terms of other domains of knowledge. It can, in fact, re-position design as the “discipline of ideas/innovation” (coined by the author in a 2005 paper/presentation), and rechristen itself as “Design-Driven Management” or DDM in short. DDM can set its focus on effective and efficient generation, incubation and diffusion of quality ideas/innovations, leaving the challenges of executing them to conventional management—something it already excels at.
Design-driven managers, instead of being relegated to administering the peripheral design/innovation function in conventional organisations, can actually become visionaries and leaders of innovating organisations, interpreting and diffusing the principles of design thinking and methods to every sphere of an organisation’s activity and vitalising it with the creative energy, adding value at every step.
Once DM adopts the DDM perspective, it is bound to become the default management model for every “innovating organisation”, and can dramatically enlarge its discourse and its sphere of influence at every level: small or big, local or global, academic or practice. In fact, it has been argued that “nothing is less productive than ‘non-innovating’”!
If the idea of “innovating organisations” seems far ahead in time, and confined to the advanced countries of the west, nothing could be farther from the truth. From a Karsanbhai Patel who adopted radically innovative distribution strategies for his Nirma detergent that made the giant Hindustan Lever break out into a sweat, to an Arvind Mills who launched ready-to-stitch jeans kits to enter the rural market, to the bus fleet operator who innovated the first double-deck “sleeper” bus and offered ice-cream to all embarking passengers—to name but three of India’s legions of grassroots innovators (I mean innovator not merely as a product or process designer)—India has a priceless tradition of innovation and entrepreneurship that flourishes till this day, at every level of society. As a recent Financial Times article says: “It is often assumed that innovation requires abundant resources, but as companies from developing countries have shown, creativity and a commitment to solving customer problems can be just as powerful a force.”
It is in these stories and case studies that precious lessons lie embedded—the challenge is not to allow ourselves to see these as case studies in “product design” or “branding”or “supply chain” but as exemplifying the practice of innovation, across disciplines. Design management education must commit to undertaking the monumental project of fanning out across the length and breadth of the country (and elsewhere too), collate, compile and sift the data, and distilling every bit of precious learning from them for the benefit of future generations.
Arvind Lodaya, 2006
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