I recently went to a 2 day conference where the theme focused on design in business. To most of us when we talk about design we instantly think about product design, but in fact design covers all aspects of our businesses. The focus of this conference was to get businesses to consider themselves in a different light as the rules of the 21st century are quite different to those for businesses in the 19th century during the industrial revolution and into the 20th century.
The concept of a customer centric organisation is not new but often businesses say they are customer centric but do not organise themselves in a fashion to really live the dream. Here are a few comments about design integrated businesses that you can consider. If you want to know more than feel free to give me a call or email. Even my thinking is evolving as I consider the topic further.
- It is about your culture, your product your brand and the way you deal with innovation through the structure of your organisation
- Design serves as a problem poser i.e. you can’t change what you don’t clearly understand
- It portrays the reality of the future without going there and spending the big money up front
- Integrated design acts as a problem solver, try to solve more than one problem in the process of thinking about impacts on your business and your customers
- Design is a provoker of change as change happens when the risk of the status quo is higher than the risk of change
Finally design led business know the following sorts of things
- they maintain a customer oriented focus
- the lines between who we are and who we serve are blurred
- they look at the long-term to see future trends and directions which shape their business
- they collaborate in the business like it is a team sport
- they are ambitious about change
- they are different in the market place
