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5.2 Relation to other disciplines and departmentsĭesign management plays three integrative key roles in the interface of design, organization and market.3.4 Promotion and conference (till 2000s).3.2 Notion of the term "design management".3.1.3 Managing design as a strategic asset (1980s–1990s).3.1.1 Managing product aesthetics and corporate design (early contributions).More and more organizations apply design management to improve design-relevant activities and to better connect design with corporate strategy. ĭesign has become a strategic asset in brand equity, differentiation, and product quality for many companies. This paradigm also focuses on a collaborative and iterative style of work and an abductive mode of inference, compared to practices associated with the more traditional management paradigm. A more recent debate concerns the integration of design thinking into strategic management as a cross-disciplinary and human-centered approach to management. Traditionally, design management was seen as limited to the management of design projects, but over time, it evolved to include other aspects of an organization at the functional and strategic level. Design management encompasses the ongoing processes, business decisions, and strategies that enable innovation and create effectively-designed products, services, communications, environments, and brands that enhance our quality of life and provide organizational success." The discipline of design management overlaps with marketing management, operations management, and strategic management. "Simply put, design management is the business side of design. Design management is a comprehensive activity at all levels of business (operational to strategic), from the discovery phase to the execution phase. The objective of design management is to develop and maintain an efficient business environment in which an organization can achieve its strategic and mission goals through design. Design managers need to speak the language of the business and the language of design.ĭesign management is a field of inquiry that uses project management, design, strategy, and supply chain techniques to control a creative process, support a culture of creativity, and build a structure and organization for design. This focus is supported on the input side by trend-scouting and market surveys on the output side, through sales promotion concepts and effective public relations – always based on unique products.Design management is the business side of design. This primarily includes a focus on unique selling propositions such as independent product design, quality and product benefits. Unlike large companies, SMEs can't afford large advertising budgets to support their branding. This is also true, and particularly so, for small and medium-sized enterprises. In positioning a company, effective branding is indispensable. Design management is what makes a company distinctive and unique – and thus supports the development of a company’s brand image. And it gives a company a face, a recognition factor, which it projects to the outside world. A key component of marketing, it brings together the creative and productive elements of a company and gives them a direction. Design management is creative management. Innovation, design and branding – these keywords define an important part of the path to leadership in today's rapidly changing markets.
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