Design Management

Design Management is a business discipline that uses project management, design, strategy, and supply chain techniques to control a creative process, support a culture of creativity, and build a structure and organisation for design. The objective of design management is to develop and maintain a business environment in which an organisation can achieve its strategic and mission goals through design, and by establishing and managing an efficient and effective system. Design management is a comprehensive activity at all levels of business (operational to strategic), from the discovery phase to the execution phase. "Simply put, design management is the business side of design. Design management encompasses the ongoing processes, business decisions, and strategies that enable innovation and create effectively-designed products, services, communications, environments, and brands that enhance our quality of life and provide organisational success." The discipline of design management overlaps with marketing management, operations management, and strategic management.

Traditionally, design management was seen as limited to the management of design projects, but over time, it evolved to include other aspects of an organisation at the functional and strategic level. A more recent debate concerns the integration of design thinking into strategic management as a cross-disciplinary and human-centred approach to management. This paradigm also focuses on a collaborative and iterative style of work and an abductive mode of thinking, compared to practices associated with the more traditional management paradigm.

Over recent years, design has become a strategic asset in brand equity, differentiation, and product quality for many companies. More and more organisations apply design management to improve design-relevant activities and to better connect design with corporate processes.