presentation of methodology that connects business strategy and design strategy.

1. The value of design
How much is your investment in design worth to your business?
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2. Design resource valuation
The purposed methodology provides a simple criteria for measuring the value of a
company’s investment in design.
Four areas have been identified where business strategy and design strategy
clearly overlap and are of interest to both business and design leadership.
‣ Agility: responsiveness to market demands or trends
‣ Brand impact
‣ Innovation opportunities
‣ Sustainability
Design Valuation // H. Allen 2
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3. Connecting the dots
Drawing conclusions through analysis and creating opportunities through innovation
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4. Connecting the dots
What makes it possible to determine the importance of the design function
to a company’s broader business strategy is the evaluation of the relationship
between:
‣ Business strategy
‣ Business policy
‣ Business processes
and how those subjects interplay with the activities that enable design resources
to function.
‣ Planning
‣ Organizing
‣ Implementation
‣ Monitoring
‣ Evaluation
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5. Synergy is key
Finding the balance between insight, planning and action
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6. Synergy is key
By evaluating the synergy between these three levels of activity an understanding
of the value of design for each of the four criteria can be formed.
Agility | Brand impact | Innovation opportunities | Sustainability
1 Business strategy / Business policy / Business processes
2 Design strategy / Design policy / Design processes
3 Planning / Organizing / Implementation / Monitoring / Evaluation
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7. Why design matters
Influencing the position you play in todays competitive marketplace
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8. Why design matters
The aim is to help clients become smarter and provide them with actionable steps
that will move them to a position of contention in their industry.
Raising your design IQ isn’t about making you a connoisseur of well designed
artifacts. It’s about understanding the design process and benefiting from the
results.
‣ Process improvement/innovations and potential cost savings
‣ Influencing product and service innovation
‣ Shaping brand message and experience
‣ Improving usability
‣ Influencing sustainability opportunities
‣ Creating opportunities for intellectual property
‣ Shaping consumer desires and aspirations
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9. Why design matters
‣ Competing on price isn’t enough any more // Dell
‣ Banking on being the biggest doesn’t insure your success // General Motors
‣ Simply being smart doesn’t insure that customers will embrace your brand // PricewaterhouseCoopers
What does matter is
‣ Your ability to di≠erentiate yourself from those within your industry // Morningstar
‣ Your ability to capture market share through innovation // Dyson
‣ Your ability to be e∞cient and agile // Proctor and Gamble
‣ Your ability to establish policies that will increase brand value and goodwill to clients // Toyota
‣ Your ability to increase customer satisfaction // British Airways
And if your company isn’t able to do these things it will continually struggle in todays economy.
Understanding design is critical to the success of your company even if it doesn’t sell tangible products.
The experience you create through design makes it possible to succeed in delivering a positive experience
in an e∞cient manner that is relevant to stakeholders.
Design Valuation // H. Allen 9
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10. Food for thought
Next steps
Date
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11. Food for thought
The following is a brief article from the Harvard Business Review about the relationship between design,
business strategy and innovation. I hope you’ll find it interesting.
If you’ve found this brief presentation compelling and truly think the strategic implementation of design will
make a di≠erence to you or your clients or possibly have further insights that you would like to share regarding
design strategy please refer to my contact information on the last page of this presentation.
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12. www.hbrreprints.org
FORETHOUGHT INNOVATION
Innovate Faster by
Melding Design and
Strategy
by Ravi Chhatpar
•
Reprint F0709J

13. FORETHOUGHT INNOVATION
Innovate Faster by Melding Design and
Strategy
by Ravi Chhatpar
If they’re to do their job most effectively, de- should continually feed new information from
signers should be brought into the innovation user research and prototype analysis into the
process at the very earliest stages. Too many evolving business strategy. Constraints that
companies still make the mistake of keeping emerge, such as price or a decision to offer
business strategy and design activities sepa- standard versus premium features, may be
rate. Typically, marketers conceptualize a used to inform the next prototype, which can
new product based on company strategy; the then be evaluated through more formal testing.
project team gets input from various areas of And the cycle repeats.
the company and creates a business case; and Our firm’s recent work with Alltel, the
senior executives make a final choice from owner and operator of America’s largest re-
among the possibilities they’re given. Only gional wireless network, provides an example
then does the idea go to the designers. of this fully integrated process. Alltel wanted
That sequential method ensures that the to go beyond simply improving existing com-
product is aligned with strategy, allows the munications services; it wanted to change the
team to create buy-in and build consensus, industry, by making mobile devices more cen-
and gives senior executives an array of op- tral in users’ lives. We explored nearly 100
tions. But it takes a long time, so even if the ideas, from basic to wild, and then used proto-
original concept drew on real-world data types to investigate the most compelling. We
about users, the company is inevitably un- tested these iteratively with users and with
able to adapt to rapid, unforeseen changes in Alltel partners, to understand what users did
markets and user preferences. with them and what the partners were inter-
The solution is to bring in designers at the ested in, and eventually focused on a new
very beginning of the process, because design- platform we called the Celltop, which brings
ers (if they do what they’re supposed to) will the concept of “widgetization”—on-screen PC
COPYRIGHT © 2007 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
put prototypes into circulation and share users’ mini-applications—to the mobile environ-
responses and attitudes with the project team, ment. The findings from our prototypes in-
even as the business case is being developed. formed the product road map and helped to
That enables the company to nimbly adjust to develop a model for successful execution
changes in market opportunities long before through collaboration with various industry
the product concept is set in stone. players. Because Alltel’s manufacturing part-
From concept through development, design- ners were exposed to the Celltop concept
ers should function in parallel with corporate early on, they were able to make needed
decision makers, creating prototypes for a adjustments quickly, and the new platform
number of variations on a product and then was brought to market in just 12 months.
testing them with users and, if appropriate, The traditional method of formulating
partners. Tracking how customers’ ways of product strategy—in which the various
using a product evolve over time also makes phases (the options portfolio, the business
it possible for designers to identify desirable case, the road map, the execution plan) are
new features and, in some cases, create new sequential and consensus is required for each
functionality in conjunction with users. step before the next begins—is inflexible and
Planners should concurrently be considering often leads to products that are based on out-
the business implications, asking questions dated assumptions about customer behavior
such as “How much would it cost to incorpo- and company potential. This, in essence, is
rate this new feature?” and “How should we why the U.S. auto industry was late to recog-
respond to users’ changing needs?” The team nize the market for hybrids and why Friend-
harvard business review • september 2007 page 1

14. Innovate Faster by Melding Design and Strategy •• •F ORETHOUGHT I NNOVATION
ster lost its first-mover advantage to MySpace,
which had better feature planning and scaling.
By contrast, involving designers at each
stage of the strategy and development process
can lead to better product decisions and
improve a company’s ability to seize new
market opportunities.
Ravi Chhatpar (ravi.chhatpar@frogdesign.com) is the
strategy director in the New York and Shanghai studios
of Frog Design, a strategic-creative consulting firm
headquartered in Palo Alto, California.
Reprint F0709J
To order, see the next page
or call 800-988-0886 or 617-783-7500
or go to www.hbrreprints.org
harvard business review • september 2007 page 2

15. Thanks Howard Allen: 917-653-7494
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