What is Business Design?

This blog post is part of a series of posts around Business Design. You’ll find the first post “Where does business design come from?” here.

In my previous post, I explained where business design comes from and its relevance as management and design consultancies merge. . Now, as promised, I would like to get into the nitty gritty and describe what a business designer is, what they do and and how they better the design process.

By its simplest definition, we can say that business design applies design and design thinking to business problems with the objective of bringing innovation to life. Putting this into the context of a design process, we can say that the business designer has three main functions:

1. frame, direct and/or inform the design process through a business lens to ensure design solves business problems effectively.
2. translate design solutions into value and impact through a language that business stakeholders are familiar with to prove design provides solutions to business problems.
3. apply human-centered methodologies to strengthen business and financial components of design work to create services and products that are viable.

The business designer within the design process.

1. To ensure design solves business problems effectively, business designers frame, direct or inform the design process through a business…