The Cultural Challenge How to bring designers’ skills into traditional companies

Creative thinking will change the way we work Designers reshape work flow and processes The culture of work will never be the same again and neither will the way work is organized. Some of the largest corporations in the world such as General Electric, Procter & Gamble and Intel are hiring designers and other equally creative people that you would not have expected to see on the payroll five years ago. Yet this new hiring policy is not only about product innovation. There is also growing focus on how designers can reshape work flow and processes. But in order to benefit from this potential, both companies and design agencies will have to think differently: “The days of working for a client are over, now it’s all about working with them. We don’t see ourselves as coming in to do something and then leaving again, it’s very much a partnership. We call it Radical Collaboration and it’s about spending lots of time together with the client, ” explains Poul Bennett, director at IDEO, one of the world’s leading strategic-design firms.