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Top Design Leadership Trends of 2016

Posted by on 28 April 2016
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As of late, businesses are shifting from engineering driven
to design driven, product-centric to customer-centric, marketing focused to
user experience focused. No matter what they are selling, companies have made
design integral to their business.
Fast Company recently outlined five
key trends
at the intersection of design thinking and leadership'and how to
make the most of them.

1.
Design Thinking is Core to Innovation
- Boston
Consulting Group recently released its 10th annual global survey on the state of innovation.
Design figures prominently at almost all of the top 10 companies: Apple,
Google, Tesla, Microsoft, Samsung, Toyota, BMW, Gilead Sciences, Amazon, and
Daimler. And according to the Industrial Design Society of America, most
respondents to the survey rank innovation as either the top priority or a
top-three priority at their company.
2.
Design Thinking is Not Just a Fad -
Design
thinking is now corporate code. "At Intuit we've established a design
thinking method, and we have 1,200 trained innovation catalysts," Klaus
Kaasgaard, vice president of user experience design at Intuit, told Fast
Company. "This three-day class does not make you a designer, but it does
help spread that way of working and thinking into the business
3.
User Experience is Core to Design Thinking - The
lines between design disciplines are blurring, because every customer touch point
involves design. That's why GE and IBM are in the process of hiring more than
1,000 UX designers each: Both companies want to invest in building
design-driven customer experiences. Fast Company expects user experience
designers to ply their trade in nearly all corners of the corporate world in
the coming years.
4.
Design Leadership Talent is in High Demand -
A
LinkedIn
study
of SMB talent acquisition managers found that their biggest
recruiting challenge in 2016 is finding candidates in "high-demand talent
pools." Design leaders, UX leaders, design thinkers, and design
strategists are all high-demand functions. There is no more critical role for
any company to develop, large or small, than design leadership, and executives
are catching on.

5.
Design Leaders Tend to Keep a Low Profile
- The
same study also found that companies want to do a better job of finding and
attracting the people who are not actively looking to change jobs. The best
design leaders tend to keep a low profile, and that those who are more boastful
tend to be either newbies or posers trying to get into the game.
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