CASD project — CRISP Magazine # 1
Using the strategic role of design to strengthen the competitive position of Product Service Systems and industrial design providers .
Giulia Calabretta
The innovation game has changed ; the pace is quicker , the playing field is larger , and it ’ s crowded with adversaries and allies . Businesses playing this game are faced with many strategic decisions : of product portfolio management , of innovation strategy , and of business diversification , to name but a few . Each of these decisions has a highly uncertain outcome , often involves a prolonged course of action , and necessitates significant resource commitment . The traditional approach to making these decisions would be to gather and assess all pertinent information , evaluate costs and benefits , and ultimately reach a decision based on conscious and rational deliberation . But in this new game , filled with uncertainty , complexity , and hidden interdependencies , this rational approach alone no longer suffices .
In our research , we suggest that businesses teamup with design partners to deal with the new rules of the innovation game and ensure that they keep winning at it . Design consultants often struggle to claim this role as innovation partners , given business ’ preconceptions of their skills and the difficulty connecting their work to the Key Performance Indicators that business managers are so fond of . Our research offers an answer to this struggle by exploring how design consultancies add value to their clients by improving their decision-making in the turbulent innovation playing field . Thus , design consultants don ’ t influence their clients ’ KPIs directly , but indirectly by improving their clients ’ decision-making capability .
Designers can use and make visuals to open up a discussion . This example shows two companies that used to be one and still have to
Crisp Magazine # 1
work as one . They know each other at the board level , but are complete strangers at the frontline . ( Peter Quirijnen for DesignThinkers )
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Unlike the firms who hire them , design consultancies are more likely to use an intuitive decision-making approach that , while encompassing the same building blocks as rationality — problem definition , analysis , and synthesis – is faster , often subconscious and deeply intertwined . Intuition relies on chunks of knowledge accumulated by decision makers over time and on their ability to generate solutions by recognising patterns and making holistic associations . Unlike rational decision-makers , whose effectiveness is largely determined by collecting and assessing as much information as possible , intuitive decision-makers rely more on meaningfully selecting and connecting new information with the knowledge they already have . In situations where time is scarce and information is never complete — as is often the case in the innovation game , the latter approach can be more efficient and successful . Rational decision-makers also have a tendency to approach new problems as variations of previously experienced problems . This might bias their decisionmaking towards incremental innovation .