it’s been a while ago since I promised to write a post on the 2nd design management symposium at the KISD in cologne in november this year. it seems to be the same story every year in november/december: too much projects to be finished and only 24 hrs. per day ;-)
before going into details about the saturday workshop day, I would like to recall the friday afternoon when we started the symposium. we used the afternoon for a kind of warmup into the topic.
brigitte wolf (KISD) and jörg heithoff (heithoff identity) presented their findings about a research projected they initiated and executed this summer: success stories of design management in german companies. their findings were twofold:
on the one hand small and medium sized companies who are successful in adopting design tend to invest carefully in their corporate culture which certainly includes the working atmosphere and the creative procedures. this is also the reason why it seems to be very attractive to work for these companies.
however from an economic perspective a reasonable amount of these companies rely heavily on a restricted (not to say single products) range of (successful!!!) products which account some 40% to 50% of their total annual turnover. the economic implication is obvious: this exposes them to high vulnerability if they are not able to develop powerful successors. without a backup portfolio of products in the pipeline their success might be quite elusive in the future. and everybody agrees: we’re living in tough times!
therefore the question worth asking is: how can successful designmanagers contribute to support these companies? this is certainly an area to which designmanagers can add value to. however the remaining problem is: how to convince corporate management and company owners about the value of investment into design management consulting and implementation?
therefore the second day of the symposium was devoted to highlight the value of design management strategies and the success and pitfalls of designmanagement implementation. however let me write on this tomorrow.
it wouldn’t be fair to close this post without mentioning the talks of thilo schlüter about his diploma project (the development of a complete brand concept for smart automobile for the chinese market) and peter boelsma (IDIS) reporting about the success story of the dutch designmanagement network (DMN).
the first conference day was finished by a cooking workshop under supervision of professor jenz großhans, KISD & miriam arsad, studio großhans and arsad, cologne. under their guidance all conference participants enjoyed preparing the complete asian dinner; not to mention the fun and pleasure we had eating and drinking together afterwards :-) stay tuned for the follow-up.
