DESIGN DRIVEN PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT

Design practice and anecdotal evidence point to the existence of a chasm between business plan generation and the execution. The failure to including vital industrial design criteria in these plans prevents portfolio managers from managing risk effectively. At the same time, the gap between design team and portfolio manager hinders the communication of theses criteria to the design team, jeopardizing the execution. Concepts that cross that chasm are well informed by business plans and consist of a comprehensive industrial design philosophy and results in a well balanced design discourse. We have established a best practice for design briefing and formulated the “Design Driven Portfolio Management” method. This method comprehensively evaluates, maps and communicates business and industrial design opportunities throughout the organization. The validity of the approach is established by applying the method to firms’ innovations in the design of products based on sustainable and disruptive technologies as test cases. We conclude that design brief content and concept performance correlate with innovation types and can be mapped and managed using our method.