DESIGN MANAGEMENT JOURNAL ACADEMIC REVIEW 2000 5

E D I T O R ’ S N O T E S

T H O M A S W A L T O N , P H . D .

Design Management as aBusiness and Academic Discipline

Design management is a facet of organizational management. It is a dimension of such funda-mental business activities as research, product development, marketing, communications, andproduction. The very breadth of the discipline, however, is problematic. Because it lacks thefocus and neat boundaries of other arenas of corporate expertise, it finds no natural home inthe organizational structure. In addition, design management needs and interests vary busi-ness to business, organization to organization. Sometimes, design is a revered stand-aloneentity offering services and insights to executives and managers throughout a company. Often,it is an integral aspect of product development and communications. Sometimes, it is dealtwith on a consulting and/or ad hoc basis. Alternatively, it is just assumed to reside in the wis-dom of non design managers, or it is simply ignored.

In this context, the challenge is to establish design management as a discipline that isunderstood and valued. This will happen when we can respond to certain critical questions,including: Where does design management fit in the spectrum of business management?How does it interface with other disciplines? What are the organizational structures thatsupport effective design management? What are design management best practices? How isdesign management success measured?

Answers will only come with research, investigations that move design management fromthe realm of heroic leadership and anecdotes to rational processes and hard numbers. TheDesign Management Institute has supported this transition by convening a series of interna-tional academic forums, an activity it continues to sponsor.

Initiating an Academic ReviewThe next logical step is to complement these meetings with a juried academic review. Thisspecial issue of the Design Management Journal is precisely that, the first of what will be a regularDMI publication. This volume has been guest edited by Brigitte Borja de Mozota, distinguishedlecturer on business and design at the University of Paris, respected author and researcher in thefield of design management, and chair of the Design Management Institute’s Research AdvisoryCouncil. As head of this last group, she, along with her colleagues, reviewed papers from the 9thInternational Forum on Design Management Research and Education held at Pratt Instituteduring June 1999. They also critiqued other work submitted to the Institute. From these scoresof submissions, they have chosen and edited six essays for this inaugural academic review.

The perspectives in these papers is intentionally broad: from an analysis of cost and thedesign process to studies of design management leadership; from a survey of information onconsumer research and design to an overview of the history and development of the profes-sion. The research approaches are also diverse. Some involve surveys, field observation, andstatistical analysis. Some extrapolate conclusions from case studies. Others evaluate and as-similate research done by others. Together, they outline the multiple pathways this academicreview will follow—proposing design management research methodologies, relating designmanagement decision making to work in other disciplines, setting the design managementresearch agenda, and synthesizing existing literature.

Not unexpectedly, the review’s primary audience is the academic community. More of asurprise is Borja de Mozota’s hope that its content will have an influence far beyond educatorsin design management:

6 DESIGN MANAGEMENT JOURNAL ACADEMIC REVIEW 2000

The objective of this effort is to diffuse design management research into the management world.The target audience is general management academics, although experts in strategy and marketingmay find this first issue more relevant. Of course, our aspiration is that executives and managers inthe corporate world will also find our discussions and research both of considerable interest, as well asapplicable to decision making.

The ResearchThe lead article is by Julie Hertenstein and Marjorie Platt, both on the faculty of the Collegeof Business Administration at Northeastern University, in Boston, Massachusetts. In Borja deMozota’s words, theirs is a study that examines “the strategic importance of product cost andthe role played by target cost in the product design process.” The value of their work lies in

the use of statistical data and focused case studies—rather than the war stories ofdesign managers—to explain the dynamic between design and cost. Because theirsample was small, Hertenstien and Platt caution that the results need confirmation.Their findings, nonetheless, offer insights. They confirm the intuitive notion thatthe importance of cost varies by a company’s business and market. More generally,they conclude that the deeper a project is in the development cycle, the more likelyabove-target cost estimates will kill an initiative or trigger an extension of the de-sign process in order to meet the target cost. Interestingly, they discover the basisfor cost estimates often differs between the design and manufacturing phases ofdevelopment. As a practical matter, they urge managers to adopt a clear, uniformapproach to these estimates. They also analyze the trade-off between cost and time,

and propose a methodology for calculating when delaying a project becomes more expensivethan meeting a cost target, a bottom-line figure they see as essential to well-informed decisionmaking. Overall, this is an investigation that sharpens the techniques for understanding designmanagement, as well as the content of our emerging discipline.

A second paper looks at how having voices that champion design can influence and en-hance corporate strategy. Written by Birgit Jevnaker, a faculty member in the Department ofInnovation and Economic Organization at the Norwegian School of Management, in Sanvika,Norway, it is based on case-study observations, a literature analysis, and interviews. The out-come of this effort is a distillation of the many ways design has an impact on management—from resource allocation to the development of cross-disciplinary teams, to innovation andthe development of strategic initiatives. What is intriguing is that, in addition to these globalperspectives, Jevnaker notes the many details and personal elements that contribute to designmanagement success. An interest in design, for instance, often starts with a conversation oreven a cold-call from a design consultant. The depth of design integration in an organizationis also dependent on a designer’s initiative and the ability to overcome or move outside exist-ing corporate structures. Within a company, storytelling and hands-on experiences are criticalto embedding respect for design’s value. Observing and talking with customers are frequentlythe basis for innovation. Design must be championed, but that role is really an education pro-cess that works best if it comes from a variety of internal and external sources. To have animpact on strategy, the relationship with a design consultant should be an ongoing, long-termexchange. So Jevnaker’s revelations continue as she gathers evidence to make the point that, inaddition to the rational calculus of Hertenstein and Platt, design management is also aboutleadership and human interaction.

Leadership is significant, especially as design becomes a more prominent component ofmanagement. It is perhaps for this reason that Borja de Mozota and her colleagues chose toinclude an analysis by Erik Bohemia that probes, as she puts it, “the emergence of design as asource of new product ideas and as a potential partner for managing a product developmentgroup.” Bohemia is on the faculty of the School of Civic Engineering and Environment atThe University of Western Sydney, Nepean, in Kingswood, Australia. As the premise for hisresearch, he posits the existence of a shift toward lean manufacturing, in which cross-functionalteams are the norm, development time is compressed, quality is the responsibility of all thoseinvolved in development and manufacturing, management is a participatory endeavor, andcustomization is a feature of the items produced. He creates a list of attributes typical of leanmanufacturers, and then asks what is the role of design in these organizations compared with

Leadership is significant,

especially as design becomes a

more prominent component

of management

DESIGN MANAGEMENT JOURNAL ACADEMIC REVIEW 2000 7

DESIGN MANAGEMENT AS A BUSINESS AND ACADEMIC DISCIPLINE

more-traditional companies. Based on a survey of Australian corporations, his data indicate leanmanufacturers place a greater emphasis on design. They are more likely to use designers as asource for new product ideas, include them on the development team, and see them as suitableproject leaders. This should expand the opportunities for designers as more and more firmsmove in the direction of lean manufacturing. The survey also suggests two other conclusions.The first is that research and development and marketing will remain major partners in the dev-elopment process. The second, not so positive outcome is that there is a good bit of skepticismabout designers’ leadership potential, a result that reinforces the need for our Academic Review.

David Owens, a faculty member at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School ofManagement, in Nashville, Tennessee, continues the evaluation of leadership with, as Borjade Mozota says, a “human resources management” study of team dynamics. Owens’ hypoth-esis that the different look of competing products could be linked to the rational selectionand balancing of design priorities. To test his thesis, he spent a year observing supposedlynonhierarchical design teams in action. What he discovered was that it was not reason—the identification and pursuit of specific design goals—but status that most influenced design.High-status individuals had the biggest impact on what was produced while middle- andlow-status contributors played lesser roles. The mix of disciplines and expertise did notmatter nearly as much as the perceptions of a person’s importance to the organization. Theassumption is that high-status personalities are elevated to that position because they reflecta company’s design strategy. To the degree this is true, all is well. When executives or designmanagers want change, however, the implication is that it will not only be necessary tointroduce new talent, but also undo the existing perceptions of status.

The last two articles in this issue assemble and critique an existing body of research. Thistechnique tends to extend the reach of design management as new or neglected resourcesbecome part of the discussion. It also, as Borja de Mozota appropriately highlights, is essentialto the “consensus building process in design management research.” The first paper is writtenby Robert Veryzer from the Lally School of Management and Technology at Rensselaer Poly-technic Institute, in Troy, New York. His topic is design and consumer research. He probesmany themes, including debate about the aesthetic responses to products, the idea that it mightbe possible to control the connection between design and consumer choice, the influence ofculture and social background on taste, the definition of beauty, the importance of innovationand variety, and the impact of branding on consumer preferences. Veryzer’s is a wonderfulpanorama. He comes to no definitive conclusions, but rather, presents an invaluable map tothose willing to take the next step in the research process.

Practitioners and experts in a field benefit from understanding the history and evolutionof their discipline. In this context, Borja de Mozota and her associates have chosen to reprintan article from another journal because it defines “the scope of design management and itslinks with the theory of the firm.” The author is Vivien Walsh from the Manchester Schoolof Management at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology in theUnited Kingdom. Using a rich set of references throughout her essay, Walsh explores thedefinitions of design and its integration within the corporation. She examines where it isestablished in the organization and how it is used to further business strategies. She notes thatdesign often becomes the focus for integrating disciplines. She looks at design’s contributionto research and development and innovation. She discusses the role of consultants, and sheoffers a concise history of design’s emergence as a profession. The subject matter is diverse,but Walsh’s point is to make clear that design and business are now inexorably linked, and thatthe current challenge is to get beyond the simple acknowledgment of this fact to determinehow the relationship can be both creative and effective.

We are deeply grateful to Brigitte Borja de Mozota for so thoughtfully acting as ourAcademic Review editor. She has devoted a great deal of time to this effort and done so withenthusiasm and wisdom. I have no doubt that our new economy and new approaches tointerdisciplinary management will provide many opportunities for design managers. To takefull advantage of this situation, however, we and others in the world of business and businesseducation must be articulate about the role, the processes, and benefits of design management.The Academic Review promotes this understanding. We hope you enjoy our first issue. �

(Reprint #00AWAL06)

Order FormTitleOrder # Unit Price Qty. Total

AR-V1 Papers on the Nature and Practice of Design Management $35

00AWAL05 Design Management as a Business and Academic Discipline $5

00AHER08 Profiles in Strategic Alignment: The Role of Cost Information in New Product Development $5

00AJEV25 Championing Design: Perspectives on Design Capabilities $5

00ABOH40 Suitability of Industrial Designers to Manage a Product Development Group: Australian ... $5

00AOWE55 Structure and Status in Design Teams: Implications for Design Management $5

00AVER64 Design and Consumer Research $5

00AWAL74 Design, Innovation and the Boundaries of the Firm $5

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