January 9, 2025
The fourth survey on design organization KPIs has begun. We are currently recruiting corporate design departments to participate.
→ [How to Participate]
November 21, 2024
A policy symposium was held at RIETI.
November, 2024
Two discussion papers were published at RIETI.
1. Verification and Utilization of Design Organization KPIs (Japanese only)
2. Evolution of the Roles and Functions of Design Organizations (Japanese only)
September 2, 2024
An article introducing the Design Organization KPI Research was published in the Design White Paper 2024, released by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the Japan Institute of Design Promotion. (p.162, Section 3: Companies × Design)
This research aims to quantitatively examine the impact of broadly defined "design" on organizational management, which will be essential for mid-to-long-term policies.
Specifically, we plan to conduct a standardized questionnaire survey on the contributions of design departments within organizations at approximately 20 domestic companies.
The survey results will then be analyzed in detail using quantitative methods, such as multivariate analysis and artificial intelligence, to achieve a fundamental understanding.
This type of quantitative and fundamental understanding is expected to help identify key performance indicators (KPIs) for quantitatively comparing the contributions of design departments across different organizations.
Since this is the fourth iteration of the study, we plan to integrate the accumulated data from the past three iterations to conduct a more comprehensive analysis.
Traditionally, evaluations of the impact of design organizations on management have often relied on external indicators, such as correlations with sales revenue or stock prices (e.g., Kawakami & Edamura, 2015).
Furthermore, a large-scale review study on international academic journals (Hara & Tatemoto, 2018) found that most research measures the performance of design organizations solely in terms of their function in producing product designs.
Moreover, the research methodologies used vary significantly.
As a result, it remains difficult to examine how design organizations contribute to management compared to other organizational functions, such as research and development, marketing, advertising, or public relations.
In this situation, it is challenging for business executives to quantitatively evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of maintaining an in-house design organization.
Consequently, the ability to assess "design" as a managerial resource from a quantitative perspective has been significantly hindered.
This study aims to address these challenges by identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) for design organizations.
Starting in January 2025, this research project will enter into a comprehensive collaboration with the Japan Institute of Design Promotion to advance our work together.
→Click here for press release
