Strategic Design

Design professionals are no longer just executors of new product/service design briefs but are increasingly involved in the crafting of these briefs and in the strategic decisions leading to these briefs. In order to effectively play this strategic role, design professionals need to master a set of strategic practices – i.e., routinized strategic actions and ways of working. However, since the strategic role of designers is a relatively new development, many designers lack knowledge on specific practices for acting effectively on a strategic level in innovation projects. In this book we provide an overview of these practices, of tools supporting these practices, and of case examples in which companies and designers have effectively used these practices. This book will help design professionals to become familiar with effective practices and tools for strategic innovation projects and give them a set of guidelines for easily and quickly applying these practices and tools. The cases in this book will refer to companies of different size and age, operating locally or globally, and offering products and/ or services. It will be aimed at design professionals who are or want to be involved in innovation on a strategic level (e.g, co-development of design briefs, innovation portfolio management, growth strategy, business model innovation). These design professionals might be working for design/innovation consultancies or as design/innovation managers within a company.