Category: Design Culture


Amrita Bhui

Ingredient for a successful design culture: Hire the right people!


Amrita Bhui, May 31st, 2011

“At Google we give the impression of not managing the company because we don’t really.” -  Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman at Google

Is the above statement by Eric Schmidt as clear as it reads or does one need to read between the lines? Are we unnecessarily concerned about managing design or designing management when a company like Google says that it is really not managing one of the most successful companies in the world?

To find out lets delve deeper into what Mr. Schmidt had to say because as they say, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing (but didn’t …

Read & comment »

Sorena Veerman

Creativity & efficiency; an impossible combination?


Sorena Veerman, January 24th, 2011

Nowadays, more and more design departments strive for efficiency. Within an environment that is stressed for time, an often heard complaint from designers is that they feel there’s no room for creativity anymore. They feel, for instance, management is keeping them from being creative, or there’s simply no time for creativity anymore.

Contradictionary to this perception, is the general statement in literature that creativity doesn’t require time. Instead creativity requires skills, focus and the right attitude.

The book Creativity Today[1] shares this statement and claims that by improving the basic skills of creativity; confidence, motivation and your creative potential …

Read & comment »

Jay Peters

Re-thinking Design & It’s Transformation


Jay Peters, August 31st, 2010

Next week the PARK team rolls into London to attend the (postponed) 14th annual DMI European conference with this years theme on Design Transformation.  I recently had the opportunity to attend the 22nd Design/Management Thinking conference in June in San Francisco with the theme of Re-Thinking the future of Design.  Comparing the topics covered between the two conferences, it is great to see that design is continuing to gain headway into more facets of organizations, globally, thus enabling design to take new roles and responsibilities. A few hot topics I am concentrating to stay abreast upon …

Read & comment »

PARK

Norms, simple, clear and agreed…


PARK, August 17th, 2010

… are now the way forward in design management!

Over the past decade, the practice of design management has become more professionalised. Corporate boards take leaders of design functions seriously. Boards, however, affirm top design managers informally. In the recruitment of design managers, they don’t have a whole lot of evidence to go on, apart from candidate résumés and war stories. Introducing some sensible norms for design management practice would help designers continue the process of professionalisation into the next decade.

The way design managers do their work and succeed in it cannot be left at the level of oral …

Read & comment »

Florian Weiss

Engage silent designers


Florian Weiss, July 23rd, 2010

Design managers in technology-oriented companies often face the challenge to create awareness for design throughout the company. Many design related decisions are made by employees with no or limited design knowledge. Those people are not educated as designers, but make decisions that have an impact on the final design of the product. Two papers from the London Business School by Peter Gorb and Angela Dumas adressed this issue of “Silent Designers” already over twenty years ago (Silent Design and Why Design is Difficult to Manage).

It can be argued that a great deal of design activity goes on

Read & comment »