Strategic Design Creates Business Value

Strategic design is cooperation. Dr Suzan Boztepe says strategic design consultancies almost always involve their customers in the process.
Photo: CPH Design

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Dr Suzan Boztepe is studying the innovation approaches of Danish design consultancy firms. Among other things, her study shows how strategic design creates new markets, new business models, and new brands for companies. She argues that it is the designers’ mindset that makes the difference for companies’ strategies for the future.

By Trine Vu

When company executives and staff get together to determine the direction the company should take in order to survive the intensive global competition, design consultants are increasingly included in the process. Strategic design is getting to the top of the corporate agenda for issues such as new product development, organizational change, and efforts to find the right direction for the company.

But how does strategic design work in real life? How do designers turn their innovation and creativity skills into value?

Designers Generate Innovation

Post-doc Researcher Suzan Boztepe has a Ph.D. in Strategic Design and User-Centered Design from the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, USA. In cooperation with the Department of Design at Aarhus School of Architecture and with support from the Danish Centre for Design Research, she studied how five Danish design consultancy firms managed design for generating economic value. Her research project is titled Design Management and Innovation in Danish Design Consultancies. She believes that it is the designers’ mindset that makes a difference when it comes to business strategy.

Suzan Boztepe says,
“Design is not just about making things look pretty. Design is about changing things and creating new possibilities; it is a process. Design is also a mindset, and, in strategic design, the most important point is to adopt that mindset.”

Success boxes. Designers have a skill set that makes them unique strategic consultants for companies. They think outside the box and ask questions about the future. The design consultancy firm CPH Design designed these success boxes for a client as part of a transformation process. The boxes are a tool for enhancing motivation, strengthening team building and improving internal communication. Photo: CPH Design

She points out that nowadays companies involve designers not only in new product development process but also in determining how to make the company more innovative and how to create new markets.
“Designers are good at asking overarching questions such as, What will people value in the future?, What makes sense to them? and How do they play, work, communicate, etc.? And these are the kind of questions that companies need to answer if they are to grow and develop,” she says.

Designers are also good at using visualisation and prototyping, and according to Dr Boztepe, this capacity is essential for companies engaged in organizational change, because it enables them to see, test, and modify the proposed solutions before they are actually implemented.

Expanding Markets or Creating new Ones

Strategic design has always been essential for companies, says Dr Boztepe. The main reasons that it is making its way to the top of the agenda right now, she says, are the intensive global competition and the rapid changes in the marketplace due to new technological developments. Companies simply have to think strategically to succeed in the marketplace.
“Designers have a set of valuable tools that enable creative and innovative thinking, and that’s exactly what companies need when they’re in search of new directions or solutions,” Dr Boztepe says. The design consultancy firm Designit, for example, is working in collaboration with Arla Food’s development department, Foodturum. The goal is to commercialize the company’s innovation and create new markets.

Another example from her research illustrates how design consultancies can also help expand the existing market for a company. Seidenfaden Design, which was one of the five participants in Dr Boztepe’s study, was asked to design a salt and pepper mill by Weber, which is known for its barbecue products. However, designers at Seidenfaden Design did not simply design a great pepper mill. They also added a full range of accessories to Weber’s product portfolio, which eventually expanded the underlying market concept, such that the company’s products are now not aimed at outdoor use only during the brief summer barbecue season, but are used indoors and all year round.

Brand Creation

Another example of how design consultancies can make a difference by taking a broader look at a company’s products and strategy is the design firm DN Group’s work for the Taiwanese company Procare. Dr Boztepe explains, “Procare was making a series of mainstream products like so many others, but together with DN Group, the company was able to build a brand and a new image which, in turn, enabled them to reposition itself. The designers from DN Group were working at several levels simultaneously. In cooperation with the company staff, they reviewed the company’s product line and decided which products were missing. They designed new products, packages, logo, and a communication strategy for the company. And by constantly asking, What’s the next step? they gradually developed a strategy for building the brand.”

The Key Is Grasping the Problem

Dr Suzan Boztepe gives an outline of how design consultancy firms work at several levels simultaneously. For example, they develop differentiated products (creative level), develop integrated innovations such as brand identity (integrative level), and lay the foundation for organizational change (strategic level).

One of the insights in her study was that whatever level designers may be working at, the key is to uncover the true nature of the problem. And this has to do with understanding the users and their needs, Dr Boztepe explains, and offers another example:
“An insurance company hired a design consultancy firm and said that they wanted to develop a new product. The designers’ response was that they first needed to understand the insurance company’s customers. Then the design consultancy firm’s team of anthropologists did some research at the company’s call center and elsewhere. They concluded that there was nothing wrong with the insurance company’s products, but recommended to make the products easier to understand. As a result, the design consultancy provided, among other things, sort of a Quick Guide, like the one that comes when you buy a new computer. This Quick Guide was aimed at making it easier for the insurance company’s potential customers to decide what product they actually needed and how to make a claim if and when needed.”

Strategic Design Is Cooperation

Another finding of her study is that the participating design consultancies almost always involved their customers in the process.
“A company cannot just hire a design consultancy firm, ask for a new strategy, and then sit back and wait for the result. Strategic design is developed in a collaborative process that involves all stakeholders. A good example is how CPH Design involved all stakeholders from baggage handlers and airline operators to the airport executives when they developed a fully automated system for baggage handling in Copenhagen Airport” says Dr Boztepe.

She believes that strategic design will get more attention in foreseeable future – not only in corporations but also in addressing social problems.