Championing Design: Perspectives on Design Capabilities
Championing Design: Perspectives on Design Capabilities
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倡导设计：设计能力的视角
DOI：
10.1111/j.1948-7177.2000.tb00003.x
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发表时间：
2000
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
B. Jevnaker
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
B. Jevnaker
本文讨论了领导力问题，扩大企业的动态能力的设计。十多年前，营销大师菲利普·科特勒（Philip Kotler）和他的合著者（1984）注意到设计是一种强大但被忽视的战略工具。虽然新的专业设计投资可以收回（罗伊和波特1994），充分的证据表明，设计的潜力很少被充分利用的业务（沃尔什，等1992）。“很少”意味着有些人确实在探索和利用设计获利。即使在本世纪之初，也可以看到一些值得注意的案例，例如工业设计先驱Peter贝伦为德国AEG所做的工作，其中包括产品和精心设计的企业通信。有趣的是，这种罕见的杰出设计/商业关系的案例往往是通过公司领导和设计师的创造性倡议的特别倡导而出现的-例如，通过像De Pree，吉尔伯特罗德，乔治纳尔逊和美国赫尔曼米勒的查尔斯伊姆斯这样的领导力量的倡议（Heskett 1980; Blaich 1993）。一个大胆的推动力，以推进设计似乎是至关重要的，有点被忽视，因此这是本文探讨的重点。组织和管理设计并不容易。很少有公司拥有足够先进和丰富的设计能力，以迎接知识经济和数字化经济的新挑战。工业设计可以作为一个具有启发性的案例。虽然现在有多种媒体工具可用于快速模型投影，但工业设计仍然是大多数人不熟悉的，在大多数商业环境中，它是一种罕见的专业知识（Svengren 1995;耶夫纳克尔1996）。更难得的是管理能力，连接到，并利用这些创造性的能力，在设计和管理。设计专业知识和设计相关的业务专业知识体现在专家中，也嵌入或分散在组织及其网络的多个层面中（沃尔什等，1992）。设计也位于公司的网络之外-例如，在各种各样的设计咨询公司中，这使得购买设计变得困难（布鲁斯和莫里斯1998）。此外，复杂的工业设计通常需要了解商业1和市场因素，以便为创造性的问题寻找合适的方向（Kristensen 1998）。否则，就会出现错位（大仲马，1993）。这就提出了利用合适的设计专业知识寻找、动员、整合和创造价值的领导力挑战。那么，如何与部分未知和模棱两可的东西联系起来呢？企业如何在没有足够先验知识的情况下战略性地组织设计？为了探索这个矛盾的问题，它是富有成效的，采取更密切地关注示范企业的管理方法和设计的连接。尽管设计是复杂的，很少得到充分利用，以前的研究表明，一些公司成功地组织和指导设计（1989年; 1992年; Svengren 1995年），往往是通过建立长期的关系与设计源（布鲁斯和耶夫纳克尔1998年）。我建议那些设计经验丰富的设计/商业配对案例，无论是AEG/Behrens，Yamaha/GK，Steelcase/IDEO，还是不太有名的公司名称，对于新的宝藏建造者来说都是有价值的-如果我们可以从他们有点秘密的设计/商业关系中学习的话。基于一组现实生活中的案例，本文首先探讨了企业如何能够提高他们的设计方法。我们特别描述了公司组织设计能力的潜在领导活动。有趣的是，在所有最好的案例背后，个人都扮演着持久的设计推动者的角色，提供了
This paper addresses the leadership problem of expanding a firm’s dynamic capability in design. More than a decade ago, marketing guru Philip Kotler and his co-author (1984) noticed that design is a powerful but neglected strategic tool. Although new professional design investments can pay back (Roy and Potter 1994), ample evidence suggests that the potential of design is rarely fully exploited by business (Walsh, et al. 1992).“Rarely” means that some do explore and exploit design profitably. Notable cases can be seen even at the very start of this century, such as industrial design pioneer Peter Behren’s work for the German AEG, which included products and well-designed corporate communications. Interestingly, such rare cases of outstanding design/business relations tend to emerge through a particular advocacy of company leaders and designers’ creative initiatives—for example, through initiatives by leading forces like De Pree, Gilbert Rohde, George Nelson, and Charles Eames at American Herman Miller (Heskett 1980; Blaich 1993). A bold driving force to advance design seems to be crucial and somewhat overlooked and it is thus the key point explored in this article. Organizing and managing design is not easy. Few firms possess a sufficiently advanced and rich design competence to meet the new challenges of the knowledge-based and digitized economy. Industrial design may serve as an illuminating case. Although multiple media tools are now available for rapid model projection, industrial design is still mostly unfamiliar, and it is a rare expertise in most business settings (Svengren 1995; Jevnaker 1996). Even more rare is the managerial ability to connect to, and capitalize on, these creative competencies in design and its management. Design expertise and design-related business expertise are embodied in specialists, as well as embedded—or dispersed—in multiple layers of the organization and its networks (Walsh, et al. 1992). Design is also located beyond companies’ networks—for example, in a diverse range of design consultancies, which makes buying design difficult (Bruce and Morris 1998). Moreover, complex industrial design typically needs to be informed by business1 and market factors in order to pursue suitable directions for creative problem-finding (Kristensen 1998). Otherwise, misalignments can emerge (Dumas 1993). This raises the leadership challenge of finding, mobilizing, integrating, and creating value with suitable design expertise. How then to relate to something that is partly unknown and equivocal? How do firms organize design strategically—without sufficient à priori knowledge? To explore this paradoxical problem, it is fruitful to take a closer look at exemplary firms’ managerial approaches and connections to design. Albeit design is complex and seldom fully exploited, previous research suggests that some firms organize and direct design successfully (DMI 1989; Finiw 1992; Svengren 1995), often by building long-term relations with a design source (Bruce and Jevnaker 1998). I suggest those design-experience-rich cases of design/business pairs, whether AEG/Behrens, Yamaha/GK, Steelcase/IDEO, or less famous corporate names, could be valuable for new treasure builders—if we could learn from their somewhat secret design/business relationships. Grounded in a set of real-life cases, this paper first examines how firms can become capable of advancing their design approach. We especially delineate the kind of leadership activities that were found underlying the firm’s organizing design capability. Interestingly, behind all the best cases, individuals acted as persistent design promoters, providing the