Fora, the R&D division of the Danish Authority for Enterprise and Construction, has just published a book that presents a new type of company - the concept design company.

The book, entitled "Concept Design - How to solve the complex challenges of our time", and the related background materials [both available for download - see below], focus on how design can be utilised together with other disciplines to create new solutions to the global challenges faced by the private and public sectors in the twenty-first century.

The authors suggest that these days, companies are looking for higher-level types of input from their consultants:

- Today's companies are seeking answers to the question "what?".

- What should companies focus on? What problems should the companies' innovation solve?

- In the past companies wanted answers to the question "how?". How do we develop a new product? How should it be designed? How should it be marketed, and how should the company be organised to achieve the best solution?

Concept design companies provide answers to this "what?" question by creating concepts.

- A concept is a solution to a problem, a service or a combination of products and services that have not been solved yet or which have been solved in an unsatisfactory manner.

- New technology may be an important part of a new concept, but a concept may also be built on new solutions based on existing technologies or on non-technological knowledge.

- Concept design requires at least the different skills: social science, business and design that are combined in a new manner.

- Social science skills are necessary when observing user behaviour or uncovering user needs.

- Design skills are necessary when transforming new knowledge on user and market needs into functional and aesthetics products and services. .

- Business skills are necessary when mapping the concept's validity in the market subsequent consequences to the company's business model.


International mapping

How many concept design companies are there in the world? Where are they located? How large are they? And how do they work?

The Danish research points to a number of concept design regions: the San Francisco/Bay Area, New York, London, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Munich-Stuttgart-Nürnberg, the Netherlands and Denmark.

The international mapping also provides an overview of the number of concept design companies. London (17), New York (24) and San Francisco (30) are regarded as global hubs for concept design. These are followed by Chicago (11), Denmark (10), Boston (10), Los Angeles (8), Munich-Stuttgart-Nürnberg (7) and the Netherlands (4).

Outside of the 9 regions with a certain concentration of concept design companies, the authors identified another 15 companies: 2 in Paris, 3 in Milan, 2 in Toronto, 1 in Barcelona, 1 in Zurich, 1 in Stockholm and 5 across the United States.


Three concept design strategies

The study defines three archetypes of concept design companies: strategic, design based and holistic. The three strategies are stereotypes created to promote an understanding of various business challenges. It is of course possible to combine the strategies in several ways.


The strategic concept design company

The strategic concept design company focuses on the initial phases of the innovation and development process, i.e. with a strong focus on research, strategy and concept development.

This type of company solves complex, societal, behaviour related problems often formulated by the client as an abstract problem: "how should the kindergartens of the future work?" or "how can you create a healthier working environment?".

It collects information on user needs and the client's competitive landscape. The gathered information and research material are used to develop a new product or service strategy, often illustrated with individual proposals for new concepts.

The strategic design company does not design the final product, nor its packaging. If the client wishes to design proposals for the concept proposals with the intention to market the product a design agency or the client's own design department will develop the design.


The design-focused concept design company

A design-focused concept design company will often solve traditional design assignments such as logo design, doorknobs or a chair while simultaneously working with concept design. This requires that the company is capable to work with the client's needs on a strategic level.

The design-focused concept design company is rooted in the traditional concept design industry. It focuses on the creative element and the aesthetic quality.

At the same time they are in an ongoing dialogue with the client to identify the strategic rationale behind the assignment, and quite often, the design-focused concept design company will make the argument that the client should focus on the broader cultural and societal aspects of the product, thereby upscaling the project into a more strategic, abstract and multidisciplinary assignment.


The holistic concept design company

The holistic concept design company combines research methods from a variety a professional disciplines in an attempt to understand the client's problems, map the competitive landscape, investigating user needs, analysing data, developing concepts, developing prototypes and designing the final solution.

The holistic concept design company covers therefore the entire value chain from background research to the final design of product packaging or launch of the service.

Employees at holistic concept design companies come from various professional disciplines and require a working culture that fosters cooperation across disciplines especially when a solution is going from one phase to another. This necessitates that the employees can look beyond their own discipline, something that US employees seem very capable of.


An opportunity for growth

The authors conclude that by going beyond the traditional focus on product design and taking on an approach that combines innovation and design, there is still significant growth potential for the design industry.

And in fact, that's exactly what they observed in Denmark: "Danish concept design companies have a significantly higher growth and larger export share compared to the traditional design companies".

"From 2002 to 2006 average growth among Danish concept design companies was 14 percentage points higher compared to growth among traditional design companies. During the same period average annual growth in employment was 7 percentage points higher and growth in turnover per employee was 6 percentage points higher."


Link:

- FORA
- Concept design book (pdf, 17,9 mb, 115 pages)
- Background report on the concept design book (pdf, 990 kb, 75 pages)

A short synthesis of the new Concept Design book and background materials by Mark Vanderbeeken