Roger Martin
IN JANUARY OF 2004, I made a rather bold statement on the pages of Rotman Magazine when I wrote:
We are on the cusp of a design revolution in business. Competing is no longer about creating dominance in scale-intensive industries, it’s about producing elegant, refined products and services in imagination-intensive industries. As a result, business people don’t just need to understand designers better – they need to become designers.
Little did I know at the time how eager the business community was to learn a new approach to innovation. From banks to non-profits to healthcare organizations, people accepted the fact that the mindsets and methods behind great design are also essential to successful organizations. Within six months of that initial article, Fast Company published its first (now annual) ‘Masters of Design’ issue, and BusinessWeek soon jumped on board with design content in its magazine and Web site. Even Time magazine published a dedicated design issue.
Rotman Magazine soon became a leading purveyor of the very latest on design thinking for a management audience, and our devotion to the topic remains today. We have been honoured to partner with the world’s leading design organization, IDEO, from the very start. Since Tim Brown first visited our School in 2004, 18 IDEO design thinkers have written articles for our magazine. We are pleased to feature many of these in this volume, alongside several articles from our good friend Jeanne Liedtka of the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and input from a range of other design leaders worldwide.
Why has design had such resonance with a business audience? I believe it’s because people recognize that everything that surrounds us is subject to innovation – not just physical objects, but political systems, economic policy, the ways in which medical research is conducted, and complete user experiences. Organizations can no longer count on quality, performance or price alone to sustain leadership in the global marketplace: design has emerged as a new competitive weapon and a key driver of innovation.
Our aim with this volume is to contribute to demystifying design, so that organizations of all types can ensure that it receives proper consideration. As you will see from the varied articles within, design is a process that is available to individuals at every level of an organization, and across industries.
In the end, design is about shaping a particular context for the better, rather than taking it as it is. Success today arises not from emulating others, but by evolving unique models, products and experiences – in short, creative solutions. That’s an end result we can all get behind, and design has already proven its value in achieving it.
Roger Martin
Dean, Rotman School of Management
Paola Antonelli
BACK IN UNIVERSITY, I started out as a student of Economics. I studied hard and paid close attention in class, but it didn’t take long for me to become frustrated with my subject matter. This was before Behavioural Economics emerged, and it seemed to me that my rationality-obsessed subject matter was missing out on some key aspects of human behaviour. After two years, I switched my focus to Architecture, where the complete human condition – with all of its rational and irrational aspects – appeared to be dealt with in a more truthful manner. The realm of design quickly captured my imagination, and in my mind, it was just a matter of time before all of the economical entities caught on to it.
Today, I am pleased to see widespread recognition that design is an intellectual and creative process that can be used to great effect on different scales and in different fields. Sure, there are still plenty of people who believe design is about ‘making pretty things’– and design can still result in beautiful, elegant products. But it is about so much more than that. Design has spread to almost every facet of human activity, from science and education to politics and policymaking, along the way introducing us to concepts such as interface design, nano design, interaction design and bio-design, to name just a few of its contributions.
Through all of this, one of the keenest audiences for design has been the realm of business. Leaders in this arena have made plenty of well-documented missteps in recent years, leading to widespread frustration amongst stakeholders and a frantic search for new models. The good news is that leaders who understand the power of design are embracing its methodologies and are learning how to use it as a bridge to creative solutions.
Whether your task is to design a product or an interaction, a delivery system or a business model, design is about rethinking what you are doing. Make no mistake: it is not a route to easy answers. Rather than solving problems, design finds problems, and rather than providing answers, it asks questions. And in our increasingly complex world, this is the stance we need to adopt.
A while back, The Economist asked me to think about what the world might look like in 25 years. My vision included designers and design being present at all levels of corporations and institutions, and design as an entity evolving in much the same way that Physics has – so that there is Applied Design and Theoretical Design. I see theoretical designers as the ‘philosophers’ of the future; whenever there is an important decision to be made, people will turn to them for input. Meanwhile, applied designers will visualize complex infrastructures and systems so that scientists, policymakers and the general public can manage and influence them.
This grand new era has already begun. Design is moving centre-stage in the eternal human quest to make beauty out of necessity. And as many educators, including those at the Rotman School of Management, are showing, Design Thinking – which harnesses design methodologies to achieve creative solutions – can be taught. As designers and design thinkers alike obtain roles that are more and more integral to the evolution of society, they will find themselves at the centre of an extraordinary wave of cross-pollination.
Going forward, I feel optimistic that a sense of responsibility and collective interest will become paramount, and that we will see a renaissance of positive efforts in the world. From beautiful chairs to clean water systems to conceptual scenarios on the impact of nanotechnology – design takes into account people’s needs and concerns, helping them to live better lives. Only by deeply understanding the needs of different audiences, markets and nations can designers do their job – which is to serve as the interface between humanity and progress.
Paola Antonelli is the Senior Curator of Architecture and Design and Director of Research and Development at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. She received her MA in Architecture from Milan Polytechnic in 1990, and worked at the design magazines Domus and Abitare before coming to MoMA in 1994. She is a Senior Fellow with The Royal College of Art in London and in 2006, she received the Smithsonian Institution’s National Design Award, ‘Design Mind’.
