Did you hear the sound of design finally shouldering itself into the boardroom? It’s the sound of tectonic plates shifting. This punch line - kudos a blog: Did the earth move for you? When design meets business, at scale.

Yes, it was all who heard it when the newsfeed was talking / reporting about the following:

Yes, it was the sound of when design penetrating into the cerebral cortex of business in an digital global economy. The sound of “Business Meets Design”. Design long considered its own areas of focus and for long domains to be explored in isolation from business world have been embraced by the world of business.

I am not sure if my network and friends in the workplace design industry - Architecture and Interior Design - took note of these key events that took place in the first quarter of 2016

Last year, KPMG, acquired UK-based consultancy Nunwood, which specialises in customer experience management and feedback technology and John Maeda joined KPCB as the firm’s first Design Partner, joining from his role as the President of the Rhode Island School of Design.

You may wonder, what is happening here in the world of business? A lot actually if you have been keeping track of the evolution of business from the Industrial Economy to the Knowledge Economy (defined in1957 and took place in the 80s and 90s) and to our present Digital economy (defined in 1987 and being played out in our lives at present). We have moved from Production worker to a Knowledge worker who in turn have evolved into an agile worker.

The Digital economy has rendered our age old assumptions are no more relevant and the metrics of success are being redefined and where the clarity of words we use to discuss business, standbys like marketplace and competitive advantage, are redefined and rendered almost meaningless.

it is interesting to read The Next Big Thing in Design – where Tim Brown reiterates why IDEO decided to be part of collective wherein he mentions:

“The rate of change has been dizzying, and today’s advanced technologies — AI, genomics, robotics, data science, the Internet of Things — have so outpaced our industrial-era organizations and infrastructure, they end up hitting institutional cul-de-sacs. The technologies don’t come to a halt, of course, they simply move on, seeking out other places where they race ahead. If our institutions are to survive, they’ll have to create new roadways.”

Tim Brown is right the dizzy change of the digital economy has outpaced our outpaced our industrial-era organizations and infrastructure, they end up hitting institutional cul-de-sacs. The changes of the digital economy have outpaced the ability of organisations to exist “as is” and its ability to succeed.

It is a global business environment where, it is reported that, 70% of the companies on the Fortune 1000 list 10 years ago have vanished and in an environment where no business is too big to fail or too small to succeed, where technology and society are growing at a faster pace than organisation and corporation can catch up.

It is global environment necessitating organisations to work towards achieving the digital mindset. “Digital isn’t merely an add-on; it’s a way to think differently about business models, customer journeys, and organizational agility” says: McKinsey & Company the global management consulting firm.

Digital is no more about “mobile search , it has surpassed desktop search. The entire customer journey and their resulting experiences (and expectations) are evolving with or without you. Now’s the time to not just react, but get ahead of the evolving journey to lead and shape it” says author Brain Solis in his book - X: The Experience When Business Meets Design.

In this increasing digital, global environment business leaders are finding new ways to compete in an era of unprecedented digital change. Business leaders have to rethink the business as the type of change is reshaping the relationship between customers and companies, breaking down the walls between industry sectors.

 As Digital economy is all about customer journey and “enhancing the client experience” requiring firms to create “customer / client experience” through the “customer / client journey” to succeed in the digital economy.

This is where Design comes finally shouldering itself into the boardroom. Design has become the next strategy. The global firms are adopting “Design as a Strategy” – where large organisations such as IBM, KPMG, Capgemini and others are shifting their organisations where they place design much closer to the center of the enterprise. This shift isn’t about aesthetics. It’s about applying the principles of design to the way people work. This new approach is in large part a response to the increasing complexity of business and technology and there is an expectation that design can help simplify and humanize complex systems of technology and organisations.

Design that impacts our daily life has been embraced by the business thinkers and innovators. This happened as the principle & practise of "Design Thinking" created and practised by IDEO became mainstream as the business world took notice. IDEO (pronounced “eye-dee-oh”) is an award-winning global design firm that takes a human-centered, design-based approach to helping organizations in the public and private sectors innovate and grow.

 For those unfamiliar with Design Thinking, it is an innovative methodology, that brings out the ability to combine empathy for the context of a problem, creativity in the generation of insights and solutions, and rationality to analyze and fit solutions to the context. The design thinking process is generally accepted as a system of overlapping steps rather than a sequence of orderly steps - inspiration, ideation, and implementation.

Business embraced designs and in-turn implement the design thinking process in business in the hopes of expediting progress and discovery in individual business / business world. Design has become a game changer. The global firms have realised that “Design Thinking is the answer to embrace complex change. To have a better understanding the impact of such a change read the offering of the recently formed “kyu collective”. Their creativity inherent in is wide-ranging: business strategy; culture-changing solutions; ………… design applied to ………. services to architecture, human experiences, and the systems that underpin modern business and life.

  • How long before Architecture, Interior Design and Engineering - who design the Workplace of the business gets impacted by this?
  • How are our academics and university that teach the discipline of Architecture, Interior design and engineering adapt to it and thus prepare the future designers?
  • How long before the Architecture, Interior design and engineering associations realize the impact of these events and prepare the industry for it?

The window of opportunity is very minimal before our clients disrupt the industry in the “Business of the Facility” the industry that designs, constructs and maintains the workplaces” of these organisations that have embraced “Design Thinking” to disrupt their own organisation.

The crafting of client / customer experience or rather human customer-centric is not going to be restricted to just products and services it will be crafted in the “untethered workplace” too before long.  The customer journey crafted for their clients will flow into the workplaces of these organisations that are changing to embrace complex change to succeed in the dizzy change of the digital economy, lest they be outpaced by those that understand how to embrace change. 

I would love to hear from you.