Research motivation

I have been a working professional in the domain of design and design management since 1989 and very early was given the opportunity to manage designers and began the journey of design management per se. In 2011, and after a number of professional experiences with different organizational formats and in different countries, accepted the challenge to come to the United States and start the journey of design management in large corporations, there was a curiosity about how these organisms performed in design terms and an ambition to progress in these organizations. Since then and throughout my career, in the many exposures to designers gathering and discussing design management, there were always heated discussions about the general lack of alignment between designers and organizational agendas, the lack of empowerment, responsibility and accountability of designers in top leadership in their organizations. But the insights for the lack of designers in top leadership, especially in large corporations, were always elusive, with anecdotal evidence and lack of qualitative and quantitative data from a systematic approach to the topic. This research started from this motivation, with a focused question: ‘Why aren’t there more designers in the C-Suite of F50 corporations?’.