Design Management as core competency

co-design, user-centered design, inclusive design, etc. The postmodern design manager is seen as an
artist or a theorist who focuses on creativity, freedom and individual responsibility.
For example, the design manager focuses on self-entrepreneurship on “deconstructing
hierarchical power“ through a galaxy of projects. Design isnow valued as giving voice to silence, or
previously overlooked or unheard minorities.
The core competency direction: radical design strategy as “design you can’t see“
The traditional vision of strategy as fit is not helpful in solving the previously discussed
challenges of decision makers. Therefore, another strategic theory has emerged, emanating from a
resource-based perspective as well as a collective-learning objective. This RBV view of strategy
focuses on internal development, but also on pushing the traditional boundaries of organizations
through network management. This resource-based theory of building a sustained competitive
advantage has developed since Wernerfelt’s article in 1984, which responded to the changes of
organizations’ environments.
A resource refers an asset or input to production that an organization owns, controls, or has
access to on a semi-permanent basis. Therefore, the resource-based theory should be understood by
design managers as a paradigm shift from the structure–conduct–performance (S-C-P) paradigm,
where competitive advantage is primarily determined externally by environmental factors:
differentiating from my competitors in an industry. This S-C-P view of design strategy is reactive. It is a
tangible view of the company’s potential in regards to its competitive environment.
Resource-based management highlights how the possession of internal, valuable, rare,
inimitable and non-substitutable resources may result in sustained superior performance. The
Resource-Based View of a firm’s competitive advantage emphasizes the importance of the invisible
internal assets such as the skills and values of “design you can’t see”.
Pralahad and Hamel argue that information-based, invisible assets -- such as technology,
customer trust, brand image, corporate culture and management skills -- are the real resources of
competitive advantage, because they are both difficult and time consuming to accumulate, and may
also be used in multiple ways simultaneously. To design managers, it means promoting design
abilities as rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable; it also means managing design with a long-term
perspective of sustained, competitive advantage rather than a short-term view of project management.
It is refocusing on design as being skills that are pertinent – even essential -- in developing a
corporation’s intangible assets.
A more process oriented view of strategy in the new millennium part of the
strategic discourse embraced a reconstruction view in which market
boundaries and industries can be reconstructed by actions and beliefs of
industry players.– (Johansson &Woodilla 2009)
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