This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
New Rules of Competition
Today, firms in all industries find themselves competing on design. The concept of design has broadened beyond the purely aesthetic and now includes every aspect of the consumer's interaction and experience with the brand.
Companies invest vast resources into innovation and strategy. They hire market researchers, consultants, and armies of internal staff to identify new opportunities and develop new concepts. Yet the results are less than encouraging: Some studies suggest that 70 percent of strategies never get executed and more than 80 percent of new product introductions fail or underperform. Of course, there are visible exceptions in the most crowded and competitive industries such as Apple (computing) and Target (discount retail). The companies that manage to innovate successfully enjoy financial rewards and the respect and affection of consumers. These successes depend on carefully integrating corporate strategy with design to forge deep, emotional connections.
These emotional connections are the little-understood magic that can transform a product from an object that simply serves a purpose into a rewarding and empowering experience. By creating these connections, design transforms business strategy into business success.
In Predictable Magic, we seek to demystify the design process to make strategy and design more understandable and pragmatic. Something you can use and profit from. In this way, we can transform what for many is a black art into a repeatable process. Psycho-Aesthetics® is the RKS philosophy of creating emotional connections between consumers and designs. It spans the spectrum from research to strategy to implementation and finally to consumer experience. This process harnesses your knowledge and creativity and cultivates them into results. To put it simply, Psycho-Aesthetics takes the magic out of the process and puts it into the consumer experience.
Those on the front lines leading innovation know the importance of balancing inspiration with execution. Design is an increasingly important ingredient in carrying out strategy and can also be a powerful tool for mitigating the risk inherent in bringing innovations to market.