The key to success is making the world better for other people.
Design and Strategy are two names for the same thing
Whether we are designing a service or building a strategy, we are essentially doing the same thing. We are trying to craft a new way forward.
Designers dedicate themselves to finding the best way to help people achieve their goals, and strategists focus on finding the best way for organizations to achieve their missions. All designers and strategists are essentially after the same thing – making a better future.
Our goal is to take the tools and practices of design and apply them to the questions of strategy building and innovation. We think of any organization or endeavor as a thing to be designed, and ask the questions, “What is this thing intending to do? Who is it for (both internally and externally)? What are those people trying to achieve? And how can this thing be designed to best help them achieve that?”
Good design means having a vision for the change you want to create, and the knowledge of how to bring that change about. It requires the thoughtfulness to ask the right questions, the insight to build a deep understanding of people and contexts, the ingenuity to invent new ideas, and the playfulness to experiment with prototypes to learn and improve. All of these lesson apply to both design and strategy.
And in the end, all of these activities are focussed on a singular goal: creating better futures for everyone involved.