From Design Management to Strategic Design Management

Abstract

Conflicting with heightened awareness about design's strategic role for businesses, research is lacking about methods and tools to guide designers and organizations in building strategic design management capabilities, as well as about the development of these capabilities in organizational contexts. This paper aims to provide important perspectives concerning these issues in two major ways. First, it presents the development of a new Design Management Audit Framework (DMAF) that aspires to identify and accommodate new capabilities and responsibilities that are necessary to support the changing and broadening context and roles of design. Then, the paper discusses the triggers, enablers and challenges in moving from design management to strategic design management practices in organizational contexts, based on the results of 3 in-depth case studies, which have utilized the new Design Management Audit Framework to carry out a comprehensive design management audit process inside these organizations.