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Using Design to Catalyze Strategy Implementation
March 5, 1pm EST
Chris Conley, Professor, Institute of Design and Founding Partner, Gravity Tank
Crafting strategy remains a top priority for senior leaders as globalization accelerates, competition grows, and customers' needs evolve. Successful strategies answer key questions such as, “What business should we be in?” “How do we compete?” “Where are we headed?” and “How do we get there?” The potential is significant—strategies can change the fortunes of a company because they originate from a point of high leverage—the executive suite.
However, many senior leaders find that once the strategy has been formulated, the more difficult part is getting the organization to understand and adopt it. And despite broad distribution of strategy decks, activities like town halls, plant visits, and creating new performance measures, strategy implementation is fraught with inaction. Fortunately, the design discipline, with its orientation to problem solving and making the future tangible, has something very powerful to offer. In this webinar, Professor Chris Conley will discuss how design expertise can be used to help companies implement the strategy they’ve worked so hard to create.
Key Points:
A strategy is more like a design brief than a designed solution Design should be used to help visualize the strategy Acting on strategy requires conviction, not just understanding People need to work on how to interpret strategy for their area Strategic prototypes embody futures that result from strategy Collaborative exercises are required to facilitate understanding of the strategy
Questions for participant consideration:
What strategies or directions have you been asked to pursue? What makes strategies difficult to act upon? How would you describe the similarities and differences between strategies and design problems? What is the difference between strategy and tactics? Which do you value more?
Chris Conley
Professor Chris Conley leads the Graduate Product Design program at the Institute of Design (ID) in Chicago and is a founding partner of Gravity Tank, an innovation consulting firm. He has over fifteen years of experience teaching design and helping some of the world’s most influential companies change the way they define and develop new offerings. At the Institute of Design, he educates a new kind of design professional—one that can work throughout the modern organization, leading initiatives aimed at innovation and delivering results to the bottom line. At Gravity Tank, Chris has helped companies like Office Max, Unilever, Goodyear, and Samsung work differently to define and launch successful new products and services. Recently, he became the first advisor to the CEO of Samsung Telecommunications on how to broaden the use of design expertise throughout their organization.
Chris holds a Master of Science of Design from ID and a mechanical engineering degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology. Chris is a regular contributor to design conferences and competitions worldwide, and was the 2006 Chair of the IDEA BusinessWeek Awards.
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