Unfortunately we see that the bigger a company gets the more each department will tend to work in separation, sometimes even based in different cities or countries. Within such so called ‘silo structures’, it is just a matter of time before each department starts to develop its own approach, methods, or in other words, its own language.
Being one company it is inevitable for different departments to work together in the increasingly competitive market of the 21th century. This automatically creates the need to better understand each other and hence, to speak each others language. Imagine the potential of researchers, strategic planners, creatives and developers working together in an optimal setting. It is THE recipe for developing successful products, services, brands & communication.
Early 2000 we’ve seen this need translate itself into the creation of research agencies with services extending towards strategy – “what does the research mean and how do we act upon it?” Beforehand it simply proved difficult for marketing departments to ‘read’ research reports written by psychologists, and translate them into action. The new results prove way more effective as cross functional teams have a more comprehensive understanding of the research and are therefore able to lift the resulting strategy to a higher level.
In 2008 we experienced something similar between marketing and development departments as designers and creatives are struggling ‘reading and translating’ the developed strategy into tangible brand, product and service concepts. This has become the area where the strategic design agency bridges the final gap, creating the optimal setting for future development.
Strategic Design focuses on the transformation of findings into workable tools and methods, for coherence, inspiration and guidance. We call this a creative framework which basically helps to transfer the potential of an insight early on in the development process.
Secondly Strategic Design facilitates the actual creation of ideas and concepts based on the developed tools and methods. By including developers early on in the design process we find that the success rate of innovative development increases dramatically.
Top down involvement and commitment is still one of the critical factors in becoming a design focused company. Lately we are seeing more and more companies turning to strategic design, as more and more practical examples and success stories are surfacing.
A big breakthrough is also recent research ‘Effectiviteit van Design’ [The Design Effect], based on interviews with over 400 managers in the Netherlands, stating that companies that put design at the core of their business are 20% more successful in developing new products, services and brands.
This should answer the one single questions mentioned by many innovation managers working in a variety of different areas and categories. “How do I get my manager to give me the funds to build this bridge, and how do I get my colleagues to start walking across?”.
Let’s get on with it!
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