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Innovation, Branding, and Organization: What International Design Managers Think About Their Performance
Author(s) -
Joziasse Frans,
Selders Tim,
Woudhuysen James
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
design management journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1948-7177
pISSN - 1942-5074
DOI - 10.1111/j.1948-7177.2008.tb00005.x
Subject(s) - innovator , dilemma , boom , multinational corporation , competition (biology) , marketing , talent management , business , public relations , management , political science , engineering , entrepreneurship , economics , ecology , philosophy , epistemology , finance , environmental engineering , biology
Since the dot.com boom and Clayton Christensen's book, The Innovator's Dilemma , there has been an international revival of interest in innovation. At the same time, corporate interest in branding remains buoyant. On a third issue—a world of cost‐cutting, off‐shoring, and IT—millions of managers have been forced to focus on organization. What is unclear is how design managers interpret their tasks in the current climate, and how well they think they are performing these tasks. PARK, a network of consultants in advanced design management, worked with Wouter Voskuijl, a masters student at the Delft University of Technology, to seek responses from 300 design managers worldwide. Positive and negative correlations were then made between their primary objectives and their experiences. Broad conclusions were drawn from the survey. These include the persistence of silos and the prevalence of competition within organizations, which lead design managers to feel left in the dark about other internal departments. It is also apparent that design managers feel far removed from corporate strategy. This may explain design management's fascination with measuring its performance to be commendable, which perhaps reflects a level of defensiveness.