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Innovation, Branding and Organization:
What International Design Managers think about their Performance
By PARK
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| Frans Joziasse, Tim Selders, Wouter
Voskuijl and James Woudhuysen |
1. Introduction
Since the dot.com boom and Clayton Christensen’s book The
Innovator’s Dilemma (1997), there has been a revival
of international interest in innovation. Even in sluggish Europe,
European Commission President José Manuel Barroso believes
that priority must go to growth and scientific-technological research
more than to social and environmental policy.1
At the same time, however, corporate interest in branding remains
very buoyant, despite reversals. BusinessWeek, for instance,
argues that building mass consumer cults around brands has now grown
into a widespread strategy among multinational firms. Brands, the
magazine contends, can ‘foster a sense of shared experience
and of belonging’.2
There is a third characteristic of commercial practice today.
In a world of cost-cutting, off-shoring and IT, millions of managers
around the world have been forced, as never before, to focus on
organization, both inside and outside the firm. Of course, interest
in overcoming ‘silo’ department walls within the firm
has been on the increase since the 1980s, when Japanese car manufacturers
first frightened American manufacturers with the silo-busting speed
of their new product development.3 But today, partly
because of such concern, we might well imagine that design management
within a corporation typically occupies a more mainstream role,
among the silos, than it did, say, 20 years ago.
On the other hand, hopes are also high that third parties can
help sprawling multinationals overcome those internal barriers to
innovation that remain. In the late 1990s, Cisco Systems’
R&D, the Economist enthuses, “was, as it were,
outsourced to California’s venture capitalists”, and,
well beyond Cisco, the outsourcing of Western companies’ R&D
to firms in places such as India and Russia is also on the rise.4
Yet even now, McKinsey is not satisfied. “Too often”,
it argues, “executives focus only on the intellectual property
of their own companies instead of licensing ideas from outside”.5
From Harvard, Henry Chesbrough has drawn the same conclusion.6
This leads us to a fourth feature of contemporary business. Growing
as fast as it is, corporations’ reliance on third parties
may speak of what might be termed ‘abdications of responsibility’;
in short, may speak of a lack of strategy and leadership in management
today.7 Indeed, it has been argued that the contemporary
fascination with business scorecards and Key Performance Indicators
is itself a symptom of the lack of direction in corporate life today.8
Design managers deal with R&D/innovation managers and brand
managers. They know about organizational silos, and they frequently
work with outside consultants—not least, in the field of branding.
Moreover, despite their continuing complaints that they are never
recognized, they do have important dealings with senior corporate
management, and with members of corporate boards.
So how do they interpret their tasks in this kind of climate, and
how do they think they’re doing at those tasks?
2. Putting Together the Research
To find out, PARK, a network of consultants in advanced design
management, worked with Wouter Voskuijl, a masters student at the
Delft University of Technology’s Faculty of Industrial Design
Engineering, to put statements to, and seek responses from, nearly
300 design managers worldwide. In the event, 73 produced usable
replies—a good return, and a reasonably robust statistical
sample.
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The Sample
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73 useful reactions from a mail-out to 297 international
design managers.
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59 reactions were from the US, 12 from Europe. The mean
number of employees in the design group managed was 50.
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38 design managers worked in the consumer goods, 25 in
the business-to-business domain. Others worked in other
sectors, including government. Overall, their employers’
annual sales revenues stretched from $200 million to $27
billion. Just over two-thirds said they managed a design
group that was globally centralized.
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Men outnumbered women by nearly 3 to 1; ages ran from
29 to 58, with an average age of just under 43. In terms
of university degrees, numbers were led by graduates in
graphic design (30) and industrial design (28). Other
design managers boasted other design disciplines, including
degrees in automotive design.
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Leading sectors represented were consumer durables (13),
computer hardware and software (11), automotive (10),
fast-moving consumer goods (7), financial services (7)
and consumer electronics (6).
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Just under half of the design managers used external
designers, with the accent being on graphic design, packaging
and electronic media.
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To arrive at the right kind of statements to put forward, Voskuijl
and the PARK team first performed a literature search. They then
conducted in-depth interviews with design managers at seven firms—Procter
& Gamble, Johnson Controls International, StorageTek, KLM Royal
Dutch Airlines, Heineken, Forbo Krommenie and Auping—to test
and develop their evolving ideas.
Before turning to the results of the actual piece of research,
therefore, we here review the initial hypotheses that came out of
the interview process. These initial hypotheses formed the basis
of the actual part of the research.
3. Basis of Research: Four Primary Objectives
Among Design Managers
3.1 Introduction
Just after the Second World War, and after an exhaustive study
of General Motors, Peter Drucker introduced the concept of management
by objective.9 Since then, having clear Objectives, Goals
and Strategies to meet them and Measures to assess progress—‘OGSM’—has
proved important to design managers. In our initial seven interviews,
therefore, we asked design managers to identify their primary objectives.
Coming out of this process, and drawing upon an approach first put
forward by Les Wynn,10 we took a list of four possible
objectives to our final sample of respondents.
3.2 Hypothesis 1
Our first hypothesis, H1, was that while the primary objective
of some design management activities surrounds innovation, adherents
to this objective might prove less numerous than those whose design
management activities were more broadly aimed at branding. Of course,
every brand manager would protest that his or her job is profoundly
innovative, and not a few technologists will aver that their job
is to develop products that support the corporate brand. Nevertheless,
there can be conflicts over budgets and culture between R&D-led
innovation and branding.
We believed that, too often today, exercises in branding and re-branding
could be an easier course than genuine innovation.11
We therefore hypothesized that more design managers orient to branding
than to the innovation.
3.3 Hypothesis 2
Secondly, we hypothesized that the objectives of design managers
oriented to innovation could again be divided into two groups, and
that, again, one of these would find more adherents than the other.
Some design managers have the job of making real artifacts out of
ideas originating from within the company. Others have a more ambitious
objective: to envision new business opportunities for the company.
The former objective has to do with performing the largely executive,
though still creative, function of realization; the latter is more
entrepreneurial, exploratory and catalytic in character. Our second
hypothesis, H2, was that the work of realization boasts more practitioners
than the work of envisioning.
3.4 Hypothesis 3
Our third hypothesis, H3, was that the work of design managers
oriented to branding could also be divided into two groups, with
different numbers of adherents.
Back in 1998, the management guru Tom Peters defined design as
differentiation.12 More recently, the writer Virginia
Postrel has devoted a whole book, The Stubstance of Style, to the
cause of differentiation in aesthetics—a field that very much
includes design. For Postrel, the aesthetic value of Ralph Lauren
as against that of Prada depends on the individual experiencing
the two shops.13 Nevertheless, she is in no doubt of
its existence: “Leaving aside the importance of aesthetic
pleasure for its own sake, inanimate objects and public environments
are in fact more valuable when they offer distinctive aesthetic
identities. A world of undifferentiated products and places would
not only be less pleasant; it would be more alienating and more
confusing. Without aesthetic signals, it would be harder to find
what we wanted or to complement our own personalities. The same
sort of critics who detest suburbs with identical houses and celebrate
personal nonconformity somehow believe that every detergent box
and restaurant should look like every other one, with no helpful
aesthetic signals and no accounting for taste.14”
It is an attractive argument; as Postrel says, “Those old
sci-fi visions of a future of universal jumpsuits and homogeneous
high-rises would be tyrannical in reality”.15 However,
PARK’s practical experience in the realm of design management
suggested that the management, rationalization and—dare we
say it—homogenization of the output of single companies to
the rest of the world is also a typical part of the design manager’s
everyday work. Here the accent is not on differentiating the company
brand through building changes in the design of its ‘products’.
Rather, it is on maintaining the company brand through a process
of policing the consistency of the design of its output. Not for
nothing does many a design manager ruefully describe himself or
herself as a ‘Logocop’.
Our third hypothesis was about this. We suspected that while some
design managers have as their primary objective the differentiation
of their firm’s brand image, many more are engaged in a more
cautious—though no less intensive—effort to discipline
designed and branded output in the cause of what might be termed
‘better sameness’.
3.5 The outcome of the hypotheses
When we asked our full sample about their primary objective, we
found that H1 was validated, but that H2 and H3 proved unsupported.
Here’s the difference between what we expected and what we
actually found.
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Adherents to different primary objectives
in design management: Hypotheses and outcomes with our 73
sample members
Hypotheses
| H1
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Innovation will have fewer adherents than branding.
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| H2
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Within innovation, envisioning new business opportunities
will have fewer adherents than concretizing ideas originating
from within the company.
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| H3
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Within branding, 'brand image differentiation' will
have fewer adherents than 'control design coherence'.
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Outcomes
| O1
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Innovation has 19 adherents; branding, 55.
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| O2
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Within innovation, envisioning new business opportunities
had 14 adherents; concretizing ideas originating from
within the company had just five.
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| O3
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Within branding, brand image differentiation had
the allegiance of 34 respondents, while only 21 admitted
that their primary objective was controlling design
coherence.
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We can sum up the results of our findings in a simple two-by-two
matrix.
How do we explain the variance between H2 and H3 and O2 and O3?
First, it could be argued that the relatively strong showing, in
our sample, of design managers trained in industrial design might
make for strong claims about the primacy of envisioning new business
opportunities. While the bulk of our sample was more committed to
branding than innovation, those engaged in the latter may have seen
themselves more as corporate pioneers than simply givers of form
to other colleagues’ technological or businesses ideas.
Second, a sense of pride and self-worth may have made design managers
of all descriptions claim ambitious objectives as primary. No fewer
than 48 of our sample of 73 saw their goal as to lead the way ahead.
Only 26 conceded that their goal was more cautious.
Of course, our sample is not enormous, a claim is only a claim,
and the four primary objectives outlined by no means exhaust all
those that today’s design managers possess. Nevertheless,
the principal stated objective of our sample members surrounds ambitious
image differentiation through brands. Peters and Postrel may have
overstated their case; but the proportion of our sample holding
out for differentiation tends to fit their perspectives.
That may also reflect the national peculiarities of our sample.
About half the 59 Americans in it described their goal as brand
image differentiation, and a third as aiming at controlling design
coherence. By contrast, only three of our 12 Europeans aimed at
differentiation, and a full six said they were orientated to envisioning
new business opportunities. In America, it seems, to be a design
manager is often to aim at image differentiation through branding.
4. Actual Research: Answers to Statements about
Performance
4.1 Introduction
We turn now to analysis of the answers our sample members gave
to the statements put to them. These statements were grouped around
4 design management issues:
Relationship with other internal departments Relationship with outside suppliers Relationship with corporate management and strategy Measuring performance
In this, we deploy some simple statistical techniques. First, we
look at the mean score, over a normal distribution and on a range
of 1 (answers strongly in the negative) to 7 (answers strongly in
the affirmative), registered by sample members about how much they
agree to statements about their current situation. We then look
at how that mean shifts in response to the same statements framed
in terms of what respondents wanted in the future—the ideal
situation they would like to see. Occasionally, as well, we note
the standard deviations in each of the two kinds of results acquired.
Second, through a regression analysis of our results, we see in
what way, if at all, responses to our statements were correlated
with the four kinds of objectives adhered to. Here Pearson correlations
stretched from—0.25 (strongly but inverse correlated) to +
0.5 (strongly correlated in a positive manner) With each correlation,
we also measured its statistical significance. A significance score
of 0.05, for instance, indicates that there is still a five percent
chance that the correlation is a false one. By contrast, a score
of 0.01 or below indicates that a correlation is highly significant,
with only a one percent chance of an error.
4.2 Good relations with other internal departments, but a need
to know much more
Our fourth hypothesis, H4, was that the design function has matured
enough for design managers to be able to see other internal departments
within the corporation early, frequently, and formally. Unlike the
past, we also expected that design managers know other corporate
departments pretty much inside out. The design manager, we guessed,
is no longer a Cinderella figure, bounded by ignorance of his or
her peers or internal ‘clients’.
The result of our survey broadly bore out H4. Design managers see
other internal departments within the corporation early and frequently,
if somewhat on an ad-hoc basis. We asked each sample member whether
he or she involved other departments, as internal customers for
design management, as soon as possible in projects. The mean response
reported for the current situation was a very healthy 5.4; in the
case of the ideal situation desired, it shifted to 6.18. When we
asked for reactions to the statement ‘we have frequent contact
with other departments’, they were similar, but still more
positive about the present. In the current situation, the mean was
a very strong 6.08, and, in the ideal one, it shifted only slightly—to
6.45. Finally, confronted with the statement ‘our contact
with other departments is mostly ad hoc’, the mean response
was 3.37—negative, but not very strongly so (in the ideal
situation, the mean shifted to 2.64).
Where H4 was less supported was around what design managers felt
they know about other departments. We sought responses to the rather
bald statement ‘We know everything about other departments’.
Here, means moved from a rather honest 3.84 to a hopeful 5.90.
In terms of regression analyses, we also found some useful results.
While most design managers did want earlier contact with other departments,
this was especially the case among those who saw their job as controlling
design coherence. Among self-described ‘coherers’, the
Pearson correlation with the desire for early contact in the future
was 0.248, at a significance level of 0.035.
‘Coherers’ were also especially keen on more frequent
contact with other departments (0.245/0.037). However, those who
saw their jobs as concretizing ideas from within the company yearned
even more for frequent contact (0.254/0.030)
Finally, while most design managers wanted to know much more about
other departments, the Pearson correlation of this goal with coherers
was strong (0.299) and very significant (0.010).
Altogether, design managers seem to have reasonably professional
links with other departments, even if they would like to meet them
earlier on in projects than they do. Those with limited goals, however,
favor more frequent relations, with coherers/logocops feeling they
could do better in making these relations timelier. In addition,
the desire to know more about internal departments is a strong and
fairly universal one.
4.3 Relations with outside suppliers: Relationships are long-term,
but briefing could be better
Our fifth hypothesis, H5, was quite simple. Part of the professionalization
of design management in recent years has been the more conscious
attitude taken toward external suppliers. In general, the tendency
has also been to ‘reap the financial benefits of putting more
volume to fewer agencies’.16 We therefore hypothesized
that design managers’ relationships with suppliers have become
and are becoming long-term ones, in which the briefing of suppliers
is also fairly intimate.
As it turned out, H5 was broadly vindicated. Design managers are
currently in, and want to move still more toward, long-term relationships
with external suppliers. In the current situation, the mean score
for the statement ‘We focus on long-term relationships with
our external suppliers instead of short-term relationships’
was 5.29, shifting to 6.11 in the ideal situation. To a slightly
lesser extent, design managers have frequent contact with external
suppliers: in the current situation the mean score for this statement
is 4.85, while the mean for the ideal situation shifts, modestly,
to 5.56.
Where design managers are perhaps most anxious is in the briefing
of external suppliers. Here the current mean for the statement ‘We
brief our external suppliers in detail’ is 4.99, shifting
a full point to 6.03 in the ideal situation. Moreover, design managers
out to build brand differentiation are particularly correlated with
wanting to brief external suppliers in more detail—the Pearson
regression here is 0.232, with a significance of 0.048.
An interesting outcome of our research with the sample was that
design managers dedicated to envisioning new business opportunities
stood out as having infrequent contact with external suppliers—and
as not wanting to change that situation (-0.33, 0.004; -0.253, 0.031).
It appears that envisioners have an element of the secret ‘skunk
works’ about their operations, and are keen to protect their
thinking and practice from external eyes.
4.4 Relations with corporate management and strategy: Seeing
the people more and earlier—and understanding them better
Our penultimate hypothesis, H6, was that design managers feel
the problem of corporate silos most keenly in connection with corporate
management and corporate strategy.
Design managers claim fairly frequent contact with corporate management;
the mean response to the statement ‘We have frequent contact
with corporate management’, in the current situation, is 4.7.
Those in a quest for brand image differentiation are particularly
strongly correlated with frequent contact (Pearson regression 0.340,
significance 0.003).
However, design managers feel that their frequency of contact with
corporate management could be considerably better: from the current
to the ideal situation, the mean response shifts from 4.7 to 6.08.
Tellingly, the standard deviation of responses also moves—from
fairly ragged agreement about frequency of meetings in the current
situation (SD 1.697) to near unanimity about frequency in the ideal
one (SD 0.968). Strongly correlated with wanting to see corporate
management more often were differentiators (0.252, 0.031), and,
even more and with a still higher level of statistical significance,
those charged with concretizing ideas from within the company (0.332,
0.004). The latter were also negatively correlated with wanting
merely ad hoc contact (-0.25, 0.033).
Design managers also want to involve corporate management as soon
as possible in projects. Asked about this, mean scores shifted by
a full point—from a middling 4.04 to a more demanding 5.07.
Where the gap between current and ideal is greatest, however, is
not regarding contact with corporate management, but rather around
grasp of corporate strategy. Design managers—and especially
those charged with concretizing ideas from within the company—are
self-critical about the integration of their design groups and policies
with corporate strategy. Asked to respond to the statement ‘We
take care that our designers have a lot of insight into corporate
strategy’, means shifted from 4.85 to 6.44—more than
1.5 points higher. Asked to respond to the statement ‘We fully
derive design strategy from corporate strategy’, the current
mean was high at 4.9, but the mean in the ideal situation moved
up more than a full point to 6.0.
On top of these general responses, we found that those whose aim
it was to concretize ideas from within the company were strongly
correlated with wanting their designers to have insight into corporate
strategy (0.407, 0).
Altogether, and with some nuances, H6 was supported.
4.5 Measuring performance: a sensation of backwardness
Our final hypothesis, H7, was that whatever the sad past results
of too much ‘KPI mentality’ in other occupations, design
managers today still feel a great need to continually measure their
performance. Design managers rarely differ in being self-critical
about their progress in continually measuring their performance
against objectives. Confronted with the statement ‘We always
measure our progress against objectives’, the mean response
about the current situation was 4.14. That shifted very strongly
indeed, to 6.0, in the ideal situation. Moreover, design managers
are much more unanimous about wanting to measure performance than
they are about what they are doing at the moment: the standard deviation
of responses for current and ideal circumstances falls from 1.71
to 1.000, and is 100 percent significant.
5. Summary and conclusions
We can sum up what happened to our last four Hypotheses in this
manner.
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Design managers’ relations with forces inside
and outside the firm, and their attitude to performance measurement:
Hypotheses and outcomes with our 73 sample members
Hypotheses
| H4
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Design managers see other internal departments
within the corporation early, frequently, and formally.
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| H5
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Design managers’ relationships with suppliers
have become and are becoming long-term ones, in which
the briefing of suppliers is also fairly intimate.
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| H6
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Design managers feel the problem of corporate silos
most keenly in connection with corporate management
and corporate strategy.
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| H7 |
Design managers today feel a great need to measure
their performance continually. |
Outcomes
| O4
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Relations with other internal departments are good—but
in-depth knowledge about them is felt to be lacking.
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| O5
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Relationships with suppliers are already quite long-term—ideally,
more of them will be long-term. But design managers
want to give suppliers more detailed briefs than they
currently do.
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| O6
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Design managers want to see corporate management
earlier and more frequently—but their main concern
is that their own people understand corporate strategy,
and that design strategy is derived from this.
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| O7
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Design managers want to see corporate management
earlier and more frequently—but their main concern
is that their own people understand corporate strategy,
and that design strategy is derived from this.
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We can also sum up the main correlations between the different
kinds of design managers surveyed, and their responses to statements
about both their current and their ideal situations.
We can now turn to the broad conclusions inspired by our survey.
In the early 21st century, international design managers seem to
run a very professional apparatus, even if hopes of improvement
are quite intense—with the exception of those who see themselves
as envisioning new business opportunities. There is more branding
done than innovation, which is a little sad; but within innovation,
claims for envisioning new business opportunities are wider than
they are for simply concretizing ideas originating from within the
company.
Design managers have indeed entered the mainstream of corporate
life: They enjoy professional relations with other corporate departments.
However, the persistence of silos—and, we might add, the prevalence
of competition within organizations—may be what makes design
managers feel that they are often in the dark about other internal
departments.
The probability is that design managers already know, and will
know, more about their suppliers than about their own organization—particular
their organization’s corporate management, and, even more,
its strategy. The intense relations held and wanted with suppliers
mean, for instance, that design managers are marginally more sanguine
about their frequency of contact with external suppliers (mean 4.85)
than they are about their frequency of contact with corporate management
(4.7). That fact is also rather worrying, even if it is understandable
given the pressure on senior management time. It means that design
strategy may often reflect the views of outsiders more than it does
those of the organization’s leadership.
In terms of hopes for the future, design managers still feel overly
removed from corporate strategy. That may just be part of a culture
of complaint in their discipline; but it may also reflect a dearth
of strategic vision from corporate management itself.
Design managers’ fascination with measuring their performance
against objectives could be regarded as laudable, in the sense that
it might reflect a desire for still greater professionalism. However,
the ‘if it gets measured, it gets managed’ approach
may reflect a certain defensiveness. If design strategy is not properly
derived from corporate strategy, and corporate strategy itself is
not just opaque but fundamentally deficient, then design managers’
earnest intent to measure themselves and their teams and to account
for their conduct might be an all-too-human response to a general
lack of corporate direction today.
PARK
is an international network of consultants in advanced design management.
This article is by PARK members James Woudhuysen, Frans Joziasse
and Tim Selders. It is based on the masters degree thesis of Wouter
Voskuijl, guided by Professor Eric Hultink of Delft University of
Technology, Delft, the Netherlands.
Endnotes
1Andrew Gowers and George Parker, Interview
with José Manuel Barroso, Financial Times, 2 February 2005.
2Diane Brady, ‘Cult Brands’,
Business Week, 2 August 2004.
3The classic article here is Kim B Clark
and Takahiro Fujimoto, 'The Power of Product Integrity', Harvard
Business Review, November-December 1990. See also Clark and Fujimoto,
Product Development Performance: Strategy, Organisation and Management
in the World Auto Industry, Harvard, 1991.
4‘Don't Laugh at Gilded Butterflies’,
The Economist, 22 April 2004.
5‘Getting More From Intellectual
Property’, The McKinsey Quarterly, October 2004.
6Henry Chesbrough, Open Innovation: The
New imperative for Creating and Profiting From Technology, Harvard
Business School Press, 2003.
7See James Woudhuysen, ‘Is
it RIP for R&D?’, IT Week, 24 September 2003; and
‘Where
Have All the Great Leaders in Design Gone?, 30 June 2004.
8For the case of KPIs and the UK building
trade, see Ian Abley and James Woudhuysen, Why is Construction
so Backward?, John Wiley & Sons, 2004.
9Peter Drucker, Concept of the Corporation,
The John Day Company, 1946.
10Les Wynn, ‘Industrial
Design: Crossing the Client/Consultant Divide’, Design
Management Journal, Vol 11 No 2, 2000.
11On this issue see, for example, James
Woudhuysen, ‘Brands:
Don’t Buy the Hype’, spiked-online, 24 August
2004.
12Tom Peters, ‘Design
is IT’, Design Management Journal, Vol 9 No 3, 1998.
13Virginia Postrel, The Substance of
Style: how the rise of aesthetic value is remaking commerce, culture,
and consciousness, Pantheon, 2003, p107.
14Ibid, p105.
15Ibid, p107.
16Kate Blandford, head of packaging design
at Sainsbury’s, UK, quoted in Shan Preddy, How to Market
Design Consultancy Services: Finding, Winning, Keeping and Developing
Clients, Design Council/Gower Publishing, second edition,
2004, p211.
This article appeared in the June
2005 eBulletin.
Feedback on DMI Viewpoints and article proposals
are always welcome! Please email jtobin@dmi.org.
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