Enterprise Design

What is Enterprise Design?

An enterprise, being a human construct, is designed by definition: it is structured and brought to life by people with a shared ambition. The creation of enterprises involves many design decisions of specialised experts that combine and balance many different aspects of the enterprise and its many elements.

Enterprise Design facilitates the holistic design of enterprises through three coherent facets: identity, experience and architecture. By overcoming the biases and limited horizons of isolated perspectives and looking at their intersections, we can co-design the enterprise in a disciplined, structured and holistic way to deliver on its underlying purpose.

Enterprise Design starts with understanding the enterprise as a whole, as the material to design with and the environment to be addressed. There are many separate design discipline silos that focus on certain elements only: brand, product, organisation, process, information or technology. For a holistic understanding, however, we need to consistently interconnect those existing disciplines and the enterprise elements they deal with. Enterprises work significantly better when their comprising elements are aligned and designed to work together as a whole, so we need to make sense of those elements' connections and interplay. Only such a holistic approach lets us look at the enterprise from all relevant perspectives, recognise and explore relevant dependencies, and find the biggest leverage points for change. For that reason, Enterprise Design brings together many different disciplines. Experience designers, service designers, organisation designers, process managers, enterprise architects, software architects, managers, executives, and many more, must work in close collaboration to constantly adapt to an ever-changing ecosystem.

We must not forget that designing enterprises is a process of human co-creation and collaboration. Enterprise Design requires more than analytical, business, technical, conceptual or creative skills. Enterprise Design is also about listening, talking to co-creators, and facilitating discussions and decision-making processes. It will be, at times, about mediating between parties with seemingly conflicting perspectives and interests. To support this collaborative co-design process of many disciplines, Enterprise Design makes use of visualisations that are indispensable for helping co-creators explore, understand, communicate and co-design across the entire breadth and depth of their enterprise.

Finally, to have real impact and influence, Enterprise Design needs to support entrepreneurship and strategic management. Our practitioners need to be able to partner with the most influential people, deal with political issues and inspire, inform and advise these people when important strategic decisions are made.

Learn more about getting started with Enterprise Design.