DESIGN AS STRATEGIC ACTIVITY — FIRM IDENTITY, OFFER RECONFIGURATION AND LOCAL-GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT
EZIO MANZINI

Today, design activity increasingly takes on the character of a strategy: the definition of an objective and of the «moves» necessary to achieve it, when operating in a highly unpredictable environment.

Clearly, in some ways, it has always been so: firms have always been faced with an unpredictable environment, their «life hope» has always been based on the definition of some forms of strategy and they have always considered design as a tool to «give shape» to this strategies (i.e. to define, or to redefine, their own way of presenting themselves on the market and, more generally, of finding their place in society).

Today, however, the true strategic nature of the design activities presents itself in far more obvious forms than it did in the past. And, above all, it requires an awareness which in the past was unnecessary.

This happens for a multitude of reasons: because the speed of change has increased; because choices can no longer relate to acquired conventions; because markets have become more turbulent; because the roles of the various actors have become mixed and mobile; because the environment in which we operate has become more unpredictable than ever and, finally, because the only thing that we know for sure is that the future will be very different form the present, and that we are living in a complex phase of transition.

Confronted with this new operative context (the context of transition), we can argue the need for design to adopt a strategic approach from various points of view and referring to different operative and cultural models (e.g. that of management, that of marketing or that of design).

Adopting the point of view of design (and its cultural and operative models) implies observing the transition phase in which we are living both from inside and outside the firm, and doing so in such a way as to transform these observations into proposals of economically feasible and socially (and environmentally) acceptable solutions. This means observing a wider variety of social, cultural and environmental questions than firms would normally take into consideration and to develop a strategy linking the new social demands, emerging from such observations, with the proposals for products, services and communications which can be successfully realised by the firms themselves.

Design activity, today, adopting a strategic approach, could take the role of agent of local-global development. That is, the role of co-promoter of a form of development coherent with the world wide opening of markets and information flows, but also capable of identifying local resources and exploiting them in the best way.

The work hypothesis presented here is that, facing the processes of globalisation, re-localisation and, very often, de-industrialisation in act today, and in order to become an agent of local-global development, design must change its own definition and its way of operating. And it must see itself, and put itself forward, as a strategic activity whose field of action is not only products, or only product-systems (intended as integrated systems of products, services and communications), but are also the forms which the relationship between firm and community may take. That is, the way in which firm and community relate to each other at a local level.

In conclusion, adopting a strategic approach, design may play a positive social role. And, more specifically, it may promote a new generation of local-global product-systems. That is, product-systems based on new forms of local and global partnerships and able to create value both for the company, at the global scale, and for the community, at the local scale.

Ezio Manzini