Making Active and Innovative Use of Your Customer Base
Companies are keen to get in touch with their customers and users in order to gain new ideas for products and business potentials. A project headed by the Danish Technological Institute focuses on user types that are potentially valuable for business. The conclusion is that the key lies in getting involved, identifying the company's needs and involving the right users at the right time in the strategic processes.
21 February 2012

Design as Innovation Facilitator
Design-driven innovation in companies can result in both actual product development and the development of processes and business strategies. That was one of the points made at the workshop Design Driven Innovation – Organizing for Growth held at the Kolding School of Design in December 2011. Furthermore, the role of the position of design in relation to the individual company or organisation was emphasised.
17 January 2012

Putting Complex ­Processes Into Words and Images
Strategic design is about processes of change, and it has the capacity to generate innovation in Danish companies, argues Jørgen Rasmussen, associate professor and head of the Department of Design at the Aarhus School of Architecture. He explains how designers can use strategic design to help companies understand the value they are offering to their customers as a basis for developing and changing the company, and he points out that Denmark has a good basis for using strategic design to create innovation. But it is important to integrate a good understanding of business into strategic design, and here design research plays a key role.
15 February 2011

Design Researchers Create ­Development Platform for Company
Danish design researchers have helped the manufacturing company Dolle go from manufacturing attic ladders to providing access to rooms. That has secured the company a broader base and a more sustainable competitive position. The project is a textbook example of strategic design, says Associate Professor Jørgen Rassmussen, Aarhus School of Architecture, who was in charge of the project.
15 February 2011

Anchoring Innovation
Strategic design can be used to enhance a company’s focus on its innovation processes. New research shows that it is worthwhile to examine how the development process begins, and how it is anchored strategically in the company’s organisation. Interview with designer Brett Patching about his ongoing Ph.D. project at the Aarhus School of Architecture.
17 February 2010

Strategic Design: Achieving Utopian Goals
Companies can use strategic design to discover and develop new business opportunities. Strategic design has a great potential and should be incorporated into both education and research, says one of the researchers under the Danish Centre for Design Research.
18 February 2009

Challenges Facing the Design Industry
The design industry has to remain flexible and innovative in order to meet the challenges that follow from global and technological developments. Among other things, design should be used strategically, and small agencies in particular will have to engage in interdisciplinary collaboration, say Anna Kirah, Vice President and Design Consultant at CPH Design and Gitte Just, Managing Director for Danish Design Association.
16 March 2009

Strategic Design Tools
Working strategically with design is something that many companies do but rarely talk about. With her Ph.D. dissertation 'Designs strategiske potentiale – Design i virksomheders værdiskabelse' (The Strategic Potential of Design – Design in Companies’ Value Creation), architect Irene Lønne makes a contribution to the conceptualisation of strategic design. She offers a set of research-based ideas for anchoring design strategically in companies and thus making it a key element in value creation.
16 April 2009

New Educational Programmes Promote Design
To be able to draw and to have ideas is not enough for a designer. Newly established educational programmes create a basis for new combinations and new dimensions for design professionals.
15 December 2007

The Design Landscape - a New Way of Talking About Design
How can one verbalise what it is one does when working with design? And how can one explain and describe the various types of design activity that take place in companies, whether or not they have acknowledged that they are using design? Irene Lønne, architect and designer, has developed the tool ‘the design landscape’ as part of her ongoing Ph.D. project at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture. The design landscape is not only useful as a means of mapping out a company’s use of design; it can also translate a strategic ambition into a concrete solution and thus be used to explain why the company needs design.
15 November 2007