25 or so years experience as a design practitioner has bought its fair share of success [and failure] in terms of business, I often cannot help but think that just maybe design and business do not, will not and possibly will never sit well together. I don’t think it is just me - designers think in particular ways and often if not invariably have priorities, preferences and values that are difficult to align with many business imperatives. Perhaps it is this tension that has and will forever act as the irritant that creates pearls.
The respective headspaces are often for all intensive purposes at least different if not divergent despite objectives seeming the same or at least similar. Is it a right brain/left brain thing? Do business people really "get" what designers do, how they think and the kinds of decisions and contributions they make to a given process. A lot has been said in recent times about it.
Luke Wroblewski has created an interesting and potentially contentious table of comparisons about this very topic - I don’t recall it being referred to at CPH previously…apologies if it has been.
I expect to be disagreed with here so fire away! 
7 comments so far
I proposed a similar idea before a fairly distinguished gathering at Cardiff last year. My basic premise was: let’s leave growing business to the CAs and MBAs, let’s focus on growing design instead.
I think design could really do with a repositioning - as a “discipline of ideas” - that can be applied into any context (yes, business too!) but not limited to any one. Virtually every discipline is looking for innovation within itself, and “design thinking” can be a very effective method to help achieve this.
How different is design from “creativity” then, one may ask. Not very, because design *is* at its core “purposive creativity”, isn’t it? The media and materials come in only with the context, and hence form the basis of “design specialisation”.
What could be the consequences of releasing design from its traditional “frame” of industry? I think it means a greater injection of ecological and cultural (even spiritual) metaphors and models into design theory and practice - something I find enormously exciting, and just the beginning.
It depends how it’s taught, in my opinion. When I taught my design theory paper, I injected business ideas, from branding concepts to marketing strategy. Many of my “kids” are in senior design or even art direction positions, and because of my teaching, some became account managers. If the business topics are taught alongside design, at an early stage, designers who are career-oriented automatically accept them as part and parcel of their daily lives. It’s when they are add-ons to a design education that designers run into trouble.
Arvind, I like the concept of “a greater injection of ecological and cultural (even spiritual) metaphors and models into design theory and practice” a lot - it can be exciting when students become inspired by such inputs. However I recognise that this excites me because of who I am and the aspects of design practice that interests me and reflects my background and values [my post alludes to this in a way].
Although I do not think this quotation refering to the work of John Heskett solves the issue it is relevant and interesting to note [especially given your question re design and creativity]:
“In Hong Kong,where the relationship between design and business is still tentative and where some companies find it difficult to understand designers, Heskett believes it’s important to distinguish between them and artists. “Designers are not artists,”he said.“Artists have the freedom
to determine what they do and how they do it.Designers have the responsibility of insuring that what they do is appropriate for any business and its customers. Validity in art is determined internally by an artist. Validity in design is determined externally by manufacturers and customers.”
http://www.businessweek.com/adsections/2004/pdf/0411_design.pdf
Heskett’s ideas are relevant I think and Sarah Tan’s review of his 2002 book “Toothpicks and logos, Design in Everyday Life” http://www.popmatters.com/books/reviews/t/toothpicks-and-logos.shtml is worth a read if you are interested in this topic and design in general. Heskett goes further than most in defining design as a discipline…Tan pulls out this useful paragraph that alludes to much of what others have written on CPH re user-centred design…
“Will the future pattern of what is produced, and why, continue to be primarily determined by commercial companies, with designers identifying with their values; or by users, with designers and corporations serving their needs?”
Jack, as a design educator I agree with you to a point. I too have included business ideas into as much of my project work with students as possible over the years and have found that the results have been inconsistent. I think you hit the nail on the head when you identify students/”designers who are career-oriented automatically accept them as part and parcel of their daily lives.” Often though students are not so ready for the business reality - and this leads to the disparity in expectations I referred to in my post. Hell I still grapple with it despite knowing the reality of what business requires…maybe it’s about your headspace, and where you place yourself on the continuum between art and design and business.
Apologies for being off - I’m co-teaching a course on Interaction Design (my first time)!
Jack, if I understand you right, you insist on contextualising design within business to your students, and Ian, if I understand *you* right, you’re endorsing Jack (and thanks for the references!). I’m a little surprised to read this, because I assumed that in your contexts, “design” is by default regarded as exclusively a function of business - and therefore needs to be “rescued” and “liberated”!
My original comment was inspired by the concern that this may well become the dominant scenario in India as it “marches” towards over-industrialisation and consequent loss of environment, traditional lifestyles, linguistic & cultural diversity, aesthetic diversity, spiritual roots, etc. etc.
It was also informed by my own years of experience working with business & industry and the profound realization it brought me that (as a whole) they are premised on continuity and maintaning the status quo and hence are not conducive to “radical” innovation. This led me to think that the real potential of design can only be actualised in spaces that welcome radical innovation - where I found nonprofits far more receptive, and also where the designer is willing to innovate beyond her/his comfort zone of “product”/”brochure”/”packaging”.
I’ve posted a paper (on Design Management) that touches on this thought process on my personal site at http://geocities.com/lodaia/paper_innovating.htm. Would love your comments.
Just to put it in perspective: I’m not *teaching* for the first time, I am teaching *Interaction Design* for the first time ever! 
Interesting discussion. I think designers have a lot to bring to business. It is less about *delivering design* in the more traditional sense than transfering *the design approach* and its methods & tools to business people…
You might want to have a look at a blogpost I did about the relationship between business and design that extensively quotes from the book “managing as designing”…
http://business-model-design.blogspot.com/2006/05/design-matters-for-management-so-how.html
and another one on this topic here:
http://business-model-design.blogspot.com/2006/04/using-design-in-business-still-some.html
Cheers from spring in Switzerland, Alex
Bravo, Alex. Designers of the world, unite: you have nothing to lose but your [self-imposed] glass ceilings! I hope this paves the way for designers to be actually considered as CEOs.