After suffering far longer than anticipated from the flu for almost two weeks I’m happy to be back again :-) - On the other hand not reading my bloglines feed collection for almost a week has been inspiring as well since there are so many well written postings to be explored now.
Beside browsing loads of new stuff an invitation to co-moderate a panel discussion (more news on this to be posted soon) on design’s contribution to the value chain management in Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) led me to so some research on material I’ve worked with in the past. I will refer to this later on in this posting.
Basically in the context of SMEs it is interesting to note that most of the discussion about Design, Management and Innovation is being discussed in the context of large companies (with an headcount of more than 500 employees according to the EU definition) while they only make up some 3–5% (depending on the country) of the total number of companies in industrialised countries. In the EU for example SMEs represent 99% of all enterprises providing around 65 million jobs!
Even though John Thackara’s book from 2000 called: “Winners! How Today’s Successful Companies Innovate by Design” found out that the most dynamic and innovative companies who’ve been successful by using design belonged to the cluster of 100–250 employees, today design is still a miracle for many SMEs. The question is: Why?
Well, I’m definitively not the authority to answer this question comprehensively, but I have some ideas based on my experiences as a lecturer on design management as well as working as a management consultant. While this question is definitively not to be addressed in a single posting I’d like to make a series of postings which help me to give my thought snippets some shape. If you’ve anything to add feel free to do so by commenting or writing an email to me directly.
Anyway, in order to make a long story (or answer?) short for me the key starting question to be addressed in order to be successful by design is: What is your Strategy? – Sounds easy, right? But for me this is an essential question not limited to big enterprises. After all if you dig deeper by asking firm owners this question very often you get quite blurry answers no matter if big or small.
In any case a good model in order to generate a quick answer can be found in J.L. Thompson’s book “Understanding Corporate Strategy”. Thompson states that an organisation which is being managed effectively from a strategic point seeks for congruence between the:
– Environment
– Values
– Resources
which he calls E-V-R Congruence. Consequently he illustrates scenarios of congruence and incongruence as shown below (just click on the thumbnail in order to see the larger picture on Flickr):
If you have a closer look you can easily identify scenario’s which most of you certainly have observed in real life as well. So far so good. As noted above I’ve been recently browsing my older presentations which I’ve used in past workshops in design management programmes. Interestingly I’ve stumbled across a similar triangle I’ve used and which addressed the needed skills for successful innovation processes in the product design context. The three circles (or squares as you can see below) of this model comprised the variables:
– Know-How (Understanding of the processes of the operational execution)
– Know–What (Understanding of the applications of an innovation)
– Know-Why (Understanding the principles of the innovative solution)
If you try to overlap the three circles of each model you will see (well) not a 100%, but some reasonable logical overlapping:
– Environment vs. Know-What
– Values vs. Know-Why
– Resources vs. Know-How
Consequently if you want to develop innovative design solutions based on strategic thinking you have to seek for this logic match in your organisation. And as a matter of fact If there is a gap between any of these circles then get your strategic setting right and seek for knowledge inside or outside your company which helps you to fill this gap.
Interestingly my observations regarding the application (or not application) of design in SMEs is that while SMEs are usually very innovative in terms of Know-How they have problems to leverage from this Know-how in terms of Know-Why and Know-What. By the same token SMEs very often are quite strong in each of the EVR variables, but are struggling with getting them to overlap.
As a consequence by understanding how (Corporate) Identity Design helps to trigger and visualise these strategic overlappings and how for example Experience Design helps to stimulate the leverage of Know-How to Know-What and Know-Why processes SMEs might benefit enormously from thoughtful (strategic) design management.
