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I N T R O D U C T I O N

ª 2009 The Design Manage

The Evolution of DesignManagementby Rachel Cooper and Sabine Junginger

The papers selected for this issue of

the Design Management Journal were

first presented at the international

DMI Education Conference in Paris

2008. This conference, organized in

collaboration with Lancaster Univer-

sity, ESSEC Business School, and

SDA Bocconi School of Manage-

ment, focused on the challenges and

opportunities design thinking pre-

sents to designers, managers, and

organizations. Design thinking, as

we have recently written in the

Design Management Review (Cooper,

Junginger, and Lockwood, 2009), is

an ambiguous and increasingly sali-

ent activity that has significant impli-

cations for design management.

Interestingly, only 11 out of the 80

conference papers selected for the

conference addressed design thinking

directly. Another 20 papers

approached design thinking either

from the perspective of new product

development or with an eye to

organizational value.

ment Institute

Our aim with this Special

Issue is to present emerging

themes in design that have the

capacity to influence the practices

and theories of design manage-

ment. We emphasize the use of

design both as a noun and a verb.

In fact, it is here that one needs

to pause and reconsider how we

have come to think, talk, and

describe design management—which

we do mostly as a noun. As man-

agement is moving toward managing

and even designing (Boland and

Collopy, 2004), we find the activi-

ties of designing have become

embedded in various levels and in

various forms throughout a wide

range of organizations. It is quite

difficult to keep track of these dif-

ferent streams, and so we hope

that this issue also offers, however

humble, a sort of map that might

serve the reader to monitor the

contribution and value of design

overall.

Design thinking as a factor ingovernment services

Nina Terrey, for instance, writes

about design management in a large

public-sector organization—the

Australian Taxation Office

(ATO)—looking at it from the per-

spective of someone involved in the

implementation and embedding of

design across all operations over

eight years. The ATO is an organi-

zation of more than 22,000 staff,

and part of Terrey’s job was build-

ing a distributed design capability.

ATO design planners decided to

work with those who wanted to

adopt a design approach rather than

simply imposing a design structure

from on high. The working teams

they put together included design

facilitators, information designers,

and user researchers, and in this

way design models were embedded

within the organization. This trend

continued as management identified

documentation, processes, and

projects that lent themselves to a

design sensibility. Terrey reflects on

the whole project and concludes

with still more questions about

how an organization should best

allow design to be adopted and

embedded. Quite rightly—for how

do we generalize from one case

study? Will this approach work in

other organizations, and what does

it say about management education

as well as design education?

Design thinking as a businessfactor—in Russia

Maria Stashenko’s article reports on

a survey of Russian companies on

their approach to and views of

design. The article concludes that

in fact there were no companies

among the respondents that could

properly be called ‘‘design oriented.’’

Indeed, many of the companies

reported only the very beginnings of

the use of design—that is, in adver-

tising, marketing, and product

appearance. At the same time, those

companies that have made strides

toward recognizing design as a com-

petitive advantage have tended to

achieve better growth than others.

Most of these, however, have used

consultants from outside the coun-

try rather than Russian designers.

Despite evidence that Russian

companies and design consultants

are on the bottom rungs of the

maturity ladder where design is

concerned, that only means there is

nowhere to go but up. As their

design awareness grows and they

begin to see design as a strategic

and competitive tool, that tide will

begin to turn.

Design thinking and its relation toknowledge

Anna Rylander writes about the

concepts of knowledge work and

design thinking and compares the

two, looking at them in the con-

text of the knowledge-intensive

firm and the typical design consul-

tancy. She concludes that both

management and design fields are

too narrow in their conceptualiza-

tions and raises further questions

about the way we conceive of

knowledge and how that relates to

creativity and business operations

in a complex environment where

‘‘wicked problems’’ often need to

be addressed. Rylander argues that

more research into the concept of

knowledge in design organizations

can also enhance our understanding

of knowledge-intensive firms.

Understanding knowledge at its

broadest may enable us to

understand and articulate how

to embed this wider concept into

organizations.

Design research to createorganizational knowledge

Graham Marshall, who directs

design research at Motorola’s

Enterprise Mobility Solutions divi-

sion for the division’s Innovation

and Design group, describes how

the company has used customer-

centered research to build a clearer

picture of the needs of its clients

and their customers. Detailed

interviews and ethnographic studies

have not only given Motorola a

deeper knowledge of its customers’

business operations, but they have

also helped to reinvigorate innova-

tion within the company, as it tries

to meet its clients’ needs with

better designs.

Measuring design investment

James Moultrie and his colleagues

report on the initial stages of a study

to develop a ‘‘design scoreboard’’ that

would allow researchers and manag-

ers to estimate investment in design

at a national as well as a company

level. This framework was tested

with companies in terms of how easy

it was to understand, how valid it

was within their organizations, and

how easily it let them put figures to

the definitions. The authors con-

clude the article with a revised con-

ceptual model, suggesting that

further work needs to be undertaken

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D e s i g n M a n a g e m e n t J o u r n a l

in a wider survey of industry as well

as recognizing that it is impossible to

capture all design spend, because

design is not a homogeneous com-

modity.

Design thinking, design leadership,and the service industry

Judith Gloppen’s article begins by

describing current thought on

design leadership, design thinking,

and the relationship between the

two, and concludes by applying

these concepts to the expanding

European service industry. A case

study of a successful design-led

enterprise offers a vehicle for an

analytical assessment of emerging

concepts in the literature on design

leadership and design thinking.

Gloppen concludes that a holistic

understanding of design leadership

is needed in services industries and

that understanding the centrality of

the customer is essential to both

the fuller conceptualization and the

operationalization of service design.

The role of personality types increative teamwork

Emily Callaghan explores the con-

nections between personality type

and performance in group brain-

storming among cross-functional

NPD teams. She observes that

group brainstorming sessions con-

tinue to remain popular in organi-

zational practice, although research

has shown them to be ineffective.

Callaghan views past performance

metrics as one of the culprits for

this situation. These, she argues,

have focused on quantitative out-

puts from group brainstorming

sessions—i.e., the number of

ideas—without considering indivi-

dual involvement, individual satis-

faction, and the actionability of the

ideas generated. In the light of these

metrics, the personality of the indi-

viduals in the team becomes more

important. Thus, using the Myers-

Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI),

Callaghan presents a case study in

which she studies the roles person-

ality types play in the NPD brain-

storming process and in the

performance of NPD teams in

brainstorming. Though her analysis

remains partial, her findings provide

new insights into how personalities

contribute to creative teamwork.

We hope you will enjoy this

issue of the Design Management

Journal and reflect on the themes

that have emerged: the evolution of

design management, the introduc-

tion of the notion of design think-

ing, and the contribution of design

research as well as design knowl-

edge to the well-being of

organizations. &