During the last few years many of the big traditional management consultancy companies have acquired creative and digital agencies. Why? I believe they want to ensure they have the right competence and the right toolbox to future proof their business in today’s increasingly digitally transformed business landscape.
In my opinion, traditional management thinking will simply not be enough going forward in the new digital business landscape. The big consultancy companies have realized they need to add creativity and methodologies into their portfolios.
McKinsey, for example, has added a digital arm to its operations by acquiring Veryday, Lunar and Carbon 12. Accenture did the same by acquiring Fjord and Kaplan. Elsewhere, Deloitte has acquired Mobiento and Acne. These are just some examples from bigger players but there are many more examples.
How design thinking is related to business
At Ericsson, we believe that organizations need to leverage on connectivity to thrive. About five years ago, we also started to take bigger steps to develop more digital ways of working that are better suited for the business landscape of the future.
In our Future of Work report we explain how life is undergoing dramatic changes and organizations will have to rethink how they structure work. As described above, this is happening all around us – at your workplace and mine.
By creating a culture that focuses on individuals, organizations can build a reputation of being a progressive and talent friendly company.
When individuals get the opportunity to work on meaningful tasks, they embrace the organization, and they will also attract talent from their own network. Organizations that quickly learn how to manage talent will not only innovate faster than their competitors, they will also outperform them on the bottom line.
McKinsey recently published The Value of Design report in which they also conclude that “the best design performers increase their revenues and shareholder returns at nearly twice the rate of their industry counterparts.”
So, design – good design – and revenue are closely related. This means there is less space for bad design in todays connected and transparent market were users have such widespread access to all information. Back in the day, bad design had a bigger chance to survive in the analogue and physical world that no longer exists.
Good design meets the needs of the customer and user. Good design makes the complex easy to understand.
So, if we can agree that good design is a necessity in the emerging business landscape, how do you go about creating and fostering good design?
To create a good customer and user experience you need to get three areas correct. First your product or service needs to fill someone’s need for something. That’s what we call usefulness, i.e. we need to design the right product.
The next step is to design the product right, i.e. usability. Users and customers need to understand how to use and interact with your design.
The third area is brand or the aesthetics. The design has to reflect your brand and have an esthetic expression that matches the purpose of the design.
To get these three areas right there are processes that businesses can use and there are specific competences and craftmanship which they can employ – that is what the consultancy firm is paying these creative agencies for).
In future blog posts I will explore these processes, competences and what you can do to boost creativity in your business.
This blog post was originally posted on the Ericsson Blog >>>
Mikael Eriksson Björling 
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