Strategic Design

Strategic design is the craft of creating a strategy for a venture. It includes the [[ mindset of a designer ]]:

• making decisions tangible
• collaborating and co-creating with stakeholders and customers
• Adaptive more than linear work

Macro vs. Micro: Doing strategy

One of the fallacies of working on strategic decision-making is the ease of abstraction. We tend to move into these more and more abstract discussions of what problem we are trying to solve, what kind of company we want to be in the future.

This leads to a disconnect between what is easy and abstract (macro) vs. whats hard and concrete (micro). Designing or doing strategy is a conscious movement between macro and micro. Start with asking: “how can I falsify or verify whether our hypotheses are true?” And then do it!

Strategic designers understand how to launch a shop from a e-commerce strategy. They know how to build a prototype from an idea. They build a product from a number of connected trends.

• Managers that code.
• Consultants that design.
• C-level that build prototypes.

Innovation never comes to life through PowerPoint slides and Strategy Offsites. It is though work moving through the abstract and concrete levels.

Principles

• What Would Have To Be True
• How Might We Question
• Where To Play
• How To Play

Developing a Future Vision

Try to make an educated prediction about future behavior and attitudes. Through driving forces of a domain:

• changing patterns: trends, developments
• stable patterns: states, principles