Strategic Design as Agile Driver in Innovating SME´s

Strategic Design as Agile Driver in Innovating SME´s
Poster-paper abstract, DMI2012 conference

Martin Ludvigsen and Jørgen Rasmussen
Aarhus School of Architecture, Department of Design
Nørreport 20, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
martin.ludvigsen@aarch.dk, jorgen.rasmussen@aarch.dk



The paper reports on the last four years of research into strategic design (SD) at Aarhus School of Architecture, Denmark. Under the heading of organizational change and business development through design and user driven value identification, the authors have conducted a range of practice-based SD research projects engaging small and medium sized enterprises, agencies and institutions (SME’s). Through these projects several experiments have been conducted with different approaches to reach, understand and influence the strategic decisions of the companies. Theoretical positions and methods have been used to create novel perspectives into the fundamental thinking about the company and its sustaining business model itself.

Most research on the topic of strategic design (e.g. Heijden, 2005, Kumar 2004) have been focused on designers working with large, global corporations, changing these organizations’ view on product development or their approach to market and consumer insights. Design thinking has been promoted as an alternative way of experimenting, developing and changing perspectives, and at a fundamental level present alternative ways of thinking and developing new business models and products. It is widely accepted that design tools like scenario building, visual sense making (VanPatter et al., 2009), open innovation and fuzzy front-end innovation are powerful tools in dealing with changing complex structures like companies and organizations. Design thinking has now become a considerable factor in managing corporations like SAP, Citrix, Google and Autodesk and many others, in pursuit of constant development.
Projects and Methodology
The research conducted and presented in this paper has taken a design-led approach to strategy development in close collaboration with the management in the involved SME’s on the foundation of existing challenges or opportunities.

In three projects a total of 18 companies have been engaged of which three extended the collaboration spanning several days of facilitated workshops over weeks or months. At the first introductory level companies participated in a range of one-day seminars that introduced strategic design tools and worked on real challenges defined by the companies. 12 SME’s participated in an innovation project called “the Futorium” that ran for a year with an extended toolbox and several workshops. Each company worked on their own challenges while being facilitated by researchers, at workshops with other companies. For the poster presentation, we present this “Futorium” project as well as one example of an extended close and individualized collaboration between researchers and an enterprise, where the design researchers and our experimental tools were used in strategy seminars over a period of time. An upcoming full paper will elaborate on these projects, and describe the different approaches and outcomes of all the collaborations. We consider both the methodological approach and the resulting process tools and insights important contributions for future research, since the quality of the approach itself is a crucial interface between academic research and the business/practice culture. In the author’s view, research into strategic design should include participation in actual corporate context.
Research-through-design
Research through design (RtD) is a constructive research approach that deals experimentally with wicked problems in a range of settings, has been suggested as a methodological approach to conducting relevant design research (Rittel 1973, Ludvigsen 2006, Zimmerman et al. 2010). From interaction design to problems of city-planning, the active, engaged and cross-disciplinary stance of creative, constructive experimentation is seen as essential in order to elicit research findings that embrace and respects the complexity of the research context. Akin to Action Research (Argyris, 1985) this RtD approach allows access to the real complexity of business challenges, by creating responses to real needs.
Contribution to the Field
Our research suggests that SD is important and can be applied not just to large, global corporations, but also with great effect to smaller businesses. Markets, even for SME’s, are changing from local to global, and consumer behavior and expectations are changing. SME’s must adapt to these new conditions too. Where large companies have substantial resources and entire departments for supporting management with visionary thinking, SME’s often find themselves in need of the same facility, but lacking the resources. A strategic design process, even in a downscaled version, can inspire, encourage and inform management when they engage in strategic planning.

Strategy is at the core of any company. To bring “outsiders” into a strategic development process is often a sensitive matter and designers are usually not the first choice as strategic consultants. Also, strategic issues can appear abstract and difficult to address. The cases described in this paper articulate 3 important prerequisites to overcoming these barriers, when designers engage in strategy development:
1) Credibility – convincing management that strategic design can provide substaintial inspiration and knowledge as basis for strategic decisions (Boztepe, 2010).
2) Access to management – small companies provide an easier and more direct access to management throughout the process. This access is essential to any strategic advisory process.
3) Relevant and realistic projects – it is important to address challenges that relate to actual threats or opportunities to the business itself.

When these prerequisites are in place, the authors experienced that strategic design processes will unfold vast opportunities to the involved companies. The strategic designer brings a provocative, outsiders perspective to the table, seeing things in new ways, identifying new opportunities, and prototyping options. The designers bring distinguishable alternative types of knowledge, forms of analysis (Martin, 2009), and even visual, creative future-scenario construction methods to the table. This type of strategic design thinking will be further elaborated with concrete examples and reflections of impact in the full paper.
Implications for Future Research and Practice
Through the projects conducted, clear patterns indicating future paths for research in strategic design in collaboration SME’s have been found.

Research in strategic design should be engaged in a collaborative manner through participation, facilitation and intervention. This paper promotes a constructive stance of research in this field because:
1) Findings are developed in collaboration between researcher and corporation,
2) Research into the potential of strategic design must be based on actual ongoing processes in live business cases in order to be relevant to a wider audience.

The value of purely speculative strategic design research reflections is diminishing as the research field is maturing and solidifying. The work reported in this paper highly recommends that researchers take a RtD approach to investigating strategic potential of design methods. Furthermore, relevant results can be secured through approaching SME’s with easier access to strategic level management and the required trusted relation is more easily established.

As the success of the strategic design process depends on the information embedded in the company, the process must be a process of co-creation. This co-creation process defines the company as its subject since the goal is to develop the company itself. This makes the process rather complex as implementation moves to the front of the process, and not at the end. Implementation starts in the early “sensemaking phase” where the design team and the company become more aware of the structure of the company. This common insight enables them to become co-creators of new opportunities. The ownership to newly identified opportunities lies in this way within the company, in management as well as in other members of staff, and implementation thus becomes an integrated part of the change-process. This is exemplified in the cases in the upcoming full paper.

The fact that the strategic design process is completely integrated within the company, gives the strategic designer a different role than a traditional e.g. product designer. The design must take on the role of facilitator of creative experimentation rather than the role of the creator himself – informing the strategic process rather than designing the strategy.

The projects we have undertaken to date suggest that working with SME’s not only is a promising new area for strategic design as a professional field. It can also be argued that it hold strong potential in establishing a broader base of innovation as SME’s represent the majority of private enterprise in most countries. When working with SME’s, strategic design processes needs to be open, agile, adjustable and taking place in short loops in close dialogue with the company. And thusly doing academic research in strategic design with small and medium-sized companies provides a rich opportunity to experiment with strategic processes although it sets very high demands on the researchers engaging in the collaboration.
References


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