Design Management as core competency

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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) 4
See also the so-called Kim and Mauborgne “Blue Ocean strategy”, which creates an uncontested market space that makes competition irrelevant. Strategy is dynamic, rather than solely concentrated on the competitors. In this process the view of strategy is to valorize; design management focuses on design process management rather than design project management. (Figure 1) Figure 1:The design process in business: the design function (Borja de Mozota 2006) The excitement surrounding “design thinking”, as well as the new MBA often praised by Roger Martin in business media, is a good example of this radical design strategy. So why should designers now return to the basic, “what is design“ activity Quite simply, it is the skills of the designers that will help decision makers facing their current challenges. The entry point for design within organizations is not only the object to be designed for the company portfolio, but rather it is some specific skills of designers. Figure 2 is a synthesis of designers’ skills, and -- in italics -- the skills that are most relevant to our present context: 5
Page 1 and 2: Journal of Design + Management 2009
Page 3: design”;customers are not the onl
Page 7 and 8: as an art form, etc. Why, therefore
Page 9 and 10: can’t see “ through the manager
Page 11: The problem, however, is that even

Design Management as core competency

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