How Design Became a Boardroom Bystander
Design has lost its luster as a growth and innovation engine. Here’s what it must do to reclaim its seat at the corporate table.
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Design is losing its luster as a strategic discipline that is key to innovation and creating new value, and it is increasingly being targeted in cost-cutting initiatives. The fault lies with design leadership that fails to demonstrate the value that the discipline contributes to new product development and corporate results. To regain a seat at the executive table, design leaders must quantify the value they provide to the business.
In November 2022, Meta laid off 13% of its workforce — 11,000 employees. Among the hardest hit: the design and user experience teams. Just months later, Twitter’s new ownership eliminated most of its design staff. Amazon, Netflix, and dozens of other tech giants followed suit.
Executives are questioning whether design is still delivering value. To many, design teams are not the strategic assets they once were and are therefore regarded as a place to cut expenses and look for efficiencies. Meanwhile, design leaders are losing influence and their seats at the table.
Once seen as a key source of differentiation and competitive advantage, design earned that reputation through proven business impact. Companies that invested in design demonstrated outsize returns through reduced customer churn, higher product adoption, and unwavering brand loyalty. Apple’s 2007 launch of the iPhone crystallized this belief in design’s value when it showed that good design could be a growth engine that commanded premium pricing and market leadership.
Today, design finds itself under unprecedented scrutiny. Executives in many industries are asking pointed questions: What tangible value has our design investment delivered? Why do we need large design teams when basic design capabilities are now accessible through AI tools, and design thinking has become a standard part of the curriculum in business schools? Is good design a strategic necessity or an expensive luxury?
Of course, design has been declared dead so many times that its resurrection is becoming predictable. Ryan Rumsey’s Bring Out Your Design Dead project has catalogued nearly 100 articles proclaiming design’s demise, dating back to the 1930s. This time, though, it feels different.
The Rise and Stall of Strategic Design
Design’s influence within business gained traction in the mid-20th century, when Paul Rand and Raymond Loewy helped shift thinking from design as decoration to design as business strategy. They understood that good design wasn’t just about how things looked but how they worked. In the early 2000s this philosophy was crystallized at Apple, where Steve Jobs and Jony Ive used design to drive category-defining innovation. With the launch of the iPhone in 2007, design was no longer a differentiator but also a growth engine.
Design’s business value was suddenly undeniable. Every company wanted beautifully designed, intuitive experiences that brought “delight.” What had been the domain of a few visionary companies became a universal business imperative.
