Business Thinking Design Doing

On the false opposition between design and business, and why design doing and strategic thinking cannot be separated.

In the last few years consulting companies (such as Deloitte, PwC, McKinsey, Accenture and others) started to invest heavily in design and creative competences, mostly by buying independent digital agencies or design studios. It is still to be seen how this merging of cultures and teams will work and if consulting companies can compete with agencies and break even with this business. But why they are doing it? Isn’t business consulting more money by the hour than design or advertising?

The reason, I think, is that consulting companies realised that they had no real impact on customer experience. In the end it is owned by the agencies who are making campaigns, working on the social media, designing and developing digital products for their clients, and so on. And this is very important place in the new digital world of experience economy, where everyone wants to be.

Of course, to counterattack, digital agencies are offering more consulting services in the areas where they have a lot of experience: digital product design and innovation, digital marketing, technology, digital transformation, startups as a service, etc.