Background: We need a clearer way to articulate how our work creates value beyond product outcomes and scales from individual contribution to market impact.
Objective: Establish a new way to define communicate and scale impact across individuals as well as teams.
Many companies are not inherently structured or designed to fully embrace the value that design provides. This disconnect creates significant challenges for designers, researchers, and writers:
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To influence change, designers must learn how to bridge the communication gap. This involves adding value to your design work, neutralizing detractors, and building a movement of allies around your ideas.
****What Does "Business" Actually Mean to a Designer?
For designers, researchers, and writers, "business" is often seen as something external. However, successful cross-functional work depends on understanding it as a Language.
As Lynsey Thornton, GM of Store Management at Shopify, stated at the Leading Design Festival 2022: "Business isn't something that people in other company do, it is a language that I should understand in order to be valuable to the company and understand how to work cross function in any team".
This perspective highlights the need for Business Thinking for Designers, which serves as a guide to increasing your impact and value at work by learning how design connects to the bottom line. The concept of Business Design is essentially a language and a way of delivering Outcome and having Value throughout our design process.
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One of the main goals of Business Design is to connect design to business metrics. The challenges in achieving this often stem from these 3 key areas:
1. The Proximity to Capital Challenge