A conceptual framework of dynamic design management capability

Abstract

In the past decade, academic researchers and industrial practitioners developed various methods to set up a frame linking “good design” to “good business”. In most cases, their interest lay in the industrial economy and focused on the manufacturing industry. In the knowledge economy, dynamic capability is the new feature a firm should prepare for the new age. Design management capability is assigned new meaning in the emerged context. It’s time to develop a new framework of design management capability to reflect the dynamic nature of the knowledge economy. The relationships between design management capability, design awareness, business performance and design organization were explored in depth in previous studies. This is the time to integrate them into a holistic framework, to illustrate the relationships with explicit definitions of input, output and capability building. Through reviewing the previous studies and the emerged topic of dynamic characteristics in the knowledge economy, a conceptual framework is proposed here as a basis for further study.