| Design in Business: Strategic
Innovation Through Design
By Margaret Bruce and J. R. Bessant
Financal Times Management, 2002
Reviewed by Xénia Viladas
As competition in the twenty-first century gets increasingly stiff,
understanding and managing design becomes a key challenge. In order
to address it, professors Margaret Bruce (University of Manchester
Institute of Science and Technology, UK) and John Bessant (University
of Brighton, UK) provide us with a book that serves two different
but complementary objectives. Design in Business functions
as a reference text on design management for MBA programs, with
cases and examples, essay questions, and references and bibliographies
following each section; it also provides several tools aimed at
design practitioners who are learning to manage.
The book begins by defining design as the activity that renews
the things the organization has to offer. In the current competitive
environment, this capacity for renewal is a key asset for all organizations.
To guarantee that innovation actually happens, design must percolate
throughout the business with a total design management approach,
rather than be left in the hands of specialists. In this way, design
becomes a core business process that relates closely to all the
other functions in a firm (finances, operations, marketing, HR,
and so forth).
In the section that follows, Design in Business analyzes
those relationships in detail. Each chapter has been written by
a specialist practitioner; insights are supported by cases, as well
as by several useful models and tools.
The third section discusses best practices aimed at improving the
management of design—how to assess results, for example. Among
other useful references is a summary of the Design Atlas, the design
auditing tool developed by the Design Council, which can be downloaded
in full from www.designinbusiness.org.
Attention is also paid to some of design management's future challenges—design
for sustainability, trend forecasting, and e-commerce, among others.
As a textbook for students, as well as a toolbox with which design
managers can plan, manage, and assess the design function in organizations,
Design in Business is well worth reading.
This review originally appeared in the Summer
2002 Design Management Review
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