Most consumer-focused companies want their products wrapped in great designs. After all, consumers appreciate and pay extra for things that look spectacular, feel right, operate smoothly.
However, these same firms struggle with how to manage the design process. There are all kinds of best practices and metrics for creating operational efficiencies, customer relationship management programs, marketing campaigns, optimal loading dock scheduling, and customer satisfaction.
But where do business managers turn when they want to create a cracker-jack industrial design capability?
In Radical Design, Radical Results on HBS Working Knowledge, Harvard Business School visiting scholar Roberto Verganti notes that very little academic research has been done on subject of creating design strategy. The result: a lot of fly-by-the-seat of your pants approaches that succeed wildly or miss the mark widely.
For example, should your design strategy be user-centered (ask potential users what they want and make it for them) or design-centered (trust your instincts to design products that users don’t even know they want).
His study of designers in the Italian furniture industry reveals some interesting insights into the contrasting approaches used by design innovators and design imitators. You might think, for example, that innovators would be have a wider variety of products because they are willing to trust their gut and take chances. Turns out just the opposite is true, his research shows.
Innovators avoid proposing a wide range of product signs and languages as a way to protect brand identity. They tend to adopt strategies that allow customers to easily reconnect specific product signs to their brands.
On the practical side, Verganti suggests companies have their antenna tuned to design inflections that happen in every industry and be ready to lead the change rather than follow years later.
