We discover new and interesting ways of using design to create value for business and society. Managers can excel in their work if they adopt design principles and practices in their jobs.
They include, Embrace restraints, take risks, Ask relevant questions, and ensure the tools do not get in the way of ideas. Design is increasingly seen as a competitive tool by businesses.
Design concepts like hierarchy, balance, contrast, clear space, and harmony are very much applied in management. Design inspired management uses abductive reasoning, drawing on logic, as well as imagination and intuition, to explore all possibilities. It is linked to creating an improved future and desired outcomes that benefit the customer. Design inspired management will help you perceive business, products, and customers in new ways and generate ideas for innovation. Business leaders need to balance analysis and intuition, exploration and exploitation. It is a productive combination of analytics and intuition
Embrace restraints.
Designers are all about working with restraints (time, budget, location, materials). Managers need to identify limitations and then create not the perfect solution, but the best solution given the restraints. The tasks can be completed with fewer resources. Restraints magnify the challenge and increase excitement
Experiment, take risks,
Change does not happen without taking some chances. Designers are comfortable with the notion that they have to do trial and error hence they experiment and try new approaches. Leaders shall inspire the ‘logical leaps of the mind’ that allow for new ideas, and create incentive systems that encourage imagination and innovation.
Ask Questions.
Designers are used to asking myriad questions that may lead to the right question — which will lead to the right answer.
Ideas
It is not about tools, it is about ideas. Designers from various fields spend a lot of time away from new technology tools, using pencil and paper to sketch out their ideas. Generate ideas that are relevant by considering current economic, social, and business trends. Design inspired management defines an organizational environment as a place that welcomes new ideas, rather than a hostile environment that punishes changes. It revolves around three key phases, inspiration, ideation, and implementation. The phases are non-linear.
Metaphors
A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image. Managers in order to illustrate and clarify ideas can use metaphors. Personal stories can also be incredibly effective in helping to create context and meaning. Personal stories are often tied to personal values, and using these to frame a problem or goal can give the management team a sense of the values associated and their priorities.
The primary principles of design are eminently applicable to management science. They are guides to a state of being that makes sense for all types of organizations. Metaphors are a comfortable and flexible starting point for managers and they leave open the chance to use the metonymy that is provided by patters.
Hierarchy
Hierarchy brings order and meaning to messages and organizations alike. Priorities have to be defined clearly and managed for the most frequent or important. Temporary projects can be initiated with associated tasks and flexible hours.
Balance
Encourages cross-disciplinary, cross-functional, and cross-cultural research perspectives.
Contrast
Contrast focuses attention or highlights differences. Conceived as a guiding philosophy for business, design inspired management explores the contrast between explorations – defining a problem then finding the solution – and exploitation – refers continuing in what you are already doing. Design inspired management values diversity of thoughts well uncovers brilliant insights.
Clear space
Clear space often maligned, is one of the most important elements of design. Percentage time for innovation.
Harmony
Harmony brings together hierarchy, balance, contrast, and clear space in a meaningful way. Harmony persists when goals are agreed upon communicated well and acted on with conviction.
Simplicity
Managers usually wary to assume simplicity. KISS principle. Simple solutions are often the best approach. Small teams are the best.
Global awareness:
Design inspired management enables understanding how changes around the world are affecting the customers and markets. Design approaches are also being applied to infuse insight into the heart of campaigns and address social and other concerns.
Customer Focus
Focus is on an understanding of customer activities. Design inspired management continuously evolves with customer. Validation though what customers do, typically by means of direct observation.
The greatest payout of design Inspired management lies in the design of strategies and business models for organizational performance that creates both economic and human value. Broadening the definition of design, it can be the path to understanding stakeholder needs, the tool for visualizing new solutions, and the process for translating cutting-edge ideas into effective strategies.
Business Model Design
The following draws, sees three iterative gears in business design. Anchored in the needs of stakeholders, they apply deep user understanding to stimulate high-value conceptual visualizations and extract from these the strategic intent needed to reform business models.
Gear One: Deep User Understanding. The first step is to turn the telescope around to reframe the Organization and view its business entirely through the eyes of the customer (and, of course, other critical stakeholders). It is necessary to look beyond the direct use of an organization’s products or services to the contexts in which they are located, in terms of the activities surrounding their utilization, to gain deeper insight and broader behavioral and psychographic perspectives. It is also critical to understand the ‘‘whole person’’ engaged in any given activity—not just what they do, but how they feel and how their needs surrounding their activities link to other parts of their lives.
Gear Two: Concept Visualization. With renewed empathy and a broader set of criteria for innovation serving as springboard, creativity can be unleashed and move through multiple-prototyping and concept enrichment, ideally with users. It is vital to look beyond what is to what could be, using imagination to generate altogether new-to-the-world solutions. At this stage, there are no constraints, only possibilities.
Engaging all functions and disciplines on the team infuses ideas into the process, fortifies team alignment, and prepares the traction that will lock down strategies and activate them later.
Gear Three: Strategic Business Design. With well-defined, user-inspired solutions , the third gear aligns broad concepts with future reality. This entails prototyping business models to integrate their parts and assess the impact of the activity system as a whole. It is imperative to identify what will drive the success of the solutions; prioritize what activities an organization must undertake to deliver related strategies;
Define relationships strategically, operationally, and economically; and determine what net impacts the new business models will have.
EVANGEL, The Design Evangelion 