From partial insights to comprehensive considerations around design management.

Abstract

Design management has barely exceeded its initiation process in the life of organizations and in administrative thinking. It is enough to see how a large number of texts dedicated to design management start to explain and defend its importance. Likewise, there are many events and communicative materials that call for a deepening of the culture of design in general and there are not few examples that, in our material and symbolic world, reflect the absence of design in its conception.

 It could not be expected then that the management of this activity, which emerged as a concept in the literature just half a century ago, would occupy a space in organizations more expeditiously. There are undoubted remnants of misunderstanding regarding this specialty belonging to the professional universe of design; but, at the same time, more and more criteria are added to its defense as a strategic resource and as a singular source of innovation and competitiveness.

According to Mary McBride, director of the Design Management Program at the Pratt Institute, design management is often a misunderstood term, which originally took its meaning from the traditional definition of managing a design department in a firm; when it really comes down to “design-minded leadership” (i).