Newswise — Design has been called the "secret weapon" of business in the twenty-first century. That might be a stretch. But what would it actually mean if business managers took design seriously? How do designers think? After studying various kinds of designers for a decade, I'd like to share my thoughts.
1. Invention is the mother of all business strategies. For all their talk about the "art and science" of management, strategists have mostly focused on the science. But designers focus on the art. New paradigms are rarely discovered through analysis. They are, as Walt Disney said, "created first in the mind and next in the activity." Analysis plays an important role, but less important than invention. It's hard now to imagine Australia without the Sydney Opera House, but it's quite possible that this powerful invention would never have been built if initial estimates for the project " 5 years to build at $7 million - had been accurate. It actually took 14 years and cost more than $100 million. Ove Arup, an engineer who collaborated on the project said, "If the magnitude of the task had been fully appreciated"¦the Opera House would never have been built."
2. Persuasion is primary. If strategy is one choice among many, leaders must be able to persuade others of the compelling nature of their choice. And it's not an easy sell, even for seasoned leaders. New strategies in most industries today call on people to step away from the security of what has worked in the past. Like venturing into a new relationship, invitations work better than commands. Designers understand this. When Frank Gehry began sketching what would become the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, he already had a profound feel for what would draw a very traditional Basque audience to his stunningly inventive creation. He persuaded and seduced his public by connecting to the Basque's past and pointing toward a new future.
3. Simplicity is significant. No design is a better exemplar of simplicity and elegance than the little black dress, or LBD. The most striking aspect of the LBD, designed by Coco Chanel in the 1920s, is its simplicity. The LBD does not overprescribe or adorn but instead offers a black canvas, which its wearer tailors to the function at hand: add pearls and heels to dress up; a bright scarf and flats to dress down. The possibilities are endless, making the LBD the most functional item in a woman's wardrobe. But the LBD goes beyond mere functionality to achieve elegance: it lacks nothing essential and contains nothing extraneous. Simple business strategies would eschew the faddish and focus on the enduring. They would incorporate a versatility and openness that invited adornments to fit the occasion. They would emphasize assets while acknowledging, but downplaying, flaws.
4. Inspiration is needed. One of the saddest facts about the state of design is the extent to which we settle for mediocrity. We don't even attempt to engage our audience at an emotional level, let alone inspire. Yet, great designs create greatness. Consider the San Francisco Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge. The Bay Bridge offers a route across the water. The Golden Gate Bridge does that — and more. It sweeps, symbolizes, and enthralls. Like the Sydney Opera House, it has become an icon of the land. How many of our contemporary business strategies are like the Golden Gate Bridge? Too few.
5. Function matters. All of the designs we've looked at so far succeed because they work and work well. They exhibit technical mastery. The Sydney Opera House's sail-shaped roof vaults required expert engineering. The Guggenheim Bilbao's undulating titanium-clad exterior was possible only with the help of sophisticated computer modeling. And the little black dress worked because Chanel pioneered a synthetic fabric — jersey — that flowed instead of clinging. Pablo Picasso's 1895 painting, First Communion, painted when he was 14, exhibits mastery of conventional artistic technique. By 1937, when he painted Guernica, considered one of modern art's most powerful antiwar statements, he had pushed the frontiers of art and become recognized as one of the most influential, and unconventional, artists of the 20th century. But all the masters started with the basics.
6. Experimentation is part of the process. How does one move from mastery to brilliance? From technical competence to true innovation? By experimentation. Some design experiments take place in the mind and some as prototypes. Some are conducted in the real world. When IKEA's visionary founder, Ingvar Kamprad, started out, he had only a general sense of the company's approach to the furniture business. Nearly every element of IKEA's now-legendary business model — showrooms and catalogs in tandem, knockdown furniture in flat parcels, customer pickup and assembly — emerged over time from experimental solutions to urgent problems. When frustrated customers rushed into the warehouse because there weren't enough employees to help them, the store manager realized the advantages of the customers' initiative and suggested that the idea become permanent.
7. Strategic conversations should be inclusive. Design teaches us the value of turning the design process into a conversation. The more complex the challenge, the greater the benefits of multiple voices and perspectives. Consider the New Urbanism movement, which emerged from the experiences of the developers and architects of the Seaside Community in Florida. What distinguishes New Urbanism from other architectural movements is its emphasis on wide participation. This participation takes the form of a charrette, an interactive design conversation with a long tradition in art and architecture. Derived from the French word meaning "little cart," charrettes were used at the first formal school of architecture, the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, in the 19th century. As students progressed from one level to the next, their projects were placed on small carts, onto which students would leap to make their frantic finishing touches. The charrette process used in New Urbanism projects is based on four principles: involve everyone from the start who might build, use, sell, approve, or block the project; work concurrently and cross-functionally (architects, planners, engineers, economists, market experts, citizens, public officials); work in short feedback loops; and work in detail.
8. Question assumptions. To produce superior designs, we must change the way we talk to one another. Most of us have learned to talk in business settings as if we are in a debate, advocating a position. There are usually winners and losers. But in a diverse group, debate is more likely to lead to stalemate than to breakthroughs. Instead, breakthroughs are more likely to come from asking new questions, from re-examining what we take as given. In 1857, the country's first public landscape design competition was held to select the plan for New York's Central Park. Of all the submissions, only one — prepared by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux —fulfilled all of the design requirements. The most challenging element — that cross-town vehicular traffic be permitted without marring the pastoral feel of the park — was considered impossible to meet by all the other designers. Olmsted and Vaux succeeded by tossing out the assumption that the park was a two-dimensional space. Instead, they imagined the park in three dimensions, and sank four roads eight feet below its surface.
9. Focus on the possibilities. In business, strategic conversations tend to start with the constraints: budgets, implementation, impact on quarterly earnings. As a result, designs for tomorrow merely tweak designs today. Great design inevitably starts with the question "What if anything were possible?" To create a new strategy, the first step is to remove the assumptions and constraints that bind thinking to how things have always been done. In 1884, 32-year-old Antoni Gaudi was named the principal architect of Barcelona's great unfinished cathedral, Sagrada Familia. He wanted to create a "Bible in stone," a soaring interior that evoked a forest and an exterior with towers that reached for the heavens. He resolved to design his cathedral as though anything were possible, even though the constraints he faced were numerous and seemingly insurmountable. He disregarded the usual constraints of time and money. But the very real constraints imposed by the construction materials and techniques available at the time were impossible to ignore. So, he sought out new tools and techniques. He found two tools, little used in Barcelona at the time that would become the foundation of his work. The first was the catenary arch, a simple arch whose shape could be simulated by suspending a chain upside down. The second was a new material: cement. Combined with iron beams, brick or stone pillars, and a new roofing approach, cement allowed the exterior walls to bear most of the roof's weight, giving Gaudi the freedom of interior design that he craved. Completion of Gaudi's unfinished cathedral is expected within the next 20 years.
10. Last things first. Most managers are taught a straightforward problem-solving methodology: define a problem, identify various solutions, analyze each and choose one. Designers begin at the end of this process, as business guru Stephen Covey advises, by achieving clarity about the desired outcomes of the design and then working backwards. An example close to home: Thomas Jefferson devoted the last decade of his life to founding the University of Virginia, where I teach. For Jefferson, the link between democracy and education was clear: without an educated populace, there was no hope of protecting the fledging democracy that he and the other founding fathers had worked so hard to create.
Successful design is based on imagined possibilities made real. Designers are not satisfied with mediocrity, because that's the way things have always been done. They aspire to create something new and envision what that is. They work backwards from their goal. They master the needed technologies, articulate a persuasive vision. They consider multiple perspectives and are open to experimentation. Wildly successful designs are rare in any field. But they represent the world's most creative minds taking on the biggest challenges. And it's the biggest issues that are the most worthwhile to confront and the most gratifying to resolve.
Copyright 2006, Jeanne M. Liedtka
Jeanne M. Liedtka is the executive director of the Batten Institute and Johnson and Higgins Research Associate Professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business Administration.
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