Design: Design helps firms stand out - McKinsey report

Design helps businesses outperform

Companies that make good use of design outperform their business peers, according to a report by management consultancy McKinsey & Company.

After categorising companies into a Design Index according to their use of design and rating their business performance, the report found a strong correlation between businesses that made greater use of design and those that performed well.

The best-performing companies understood that "design is a top management issue" and assessed their design performance as rigorously as they reviewed areas such as sales or costs. In these instance, design metrics such as satisfaction ratings and usability assessments were employed rather than more subjective critieria to judge and justify design decisions.

By contrast, in other businesses, design leaders were almost treated as second-class citizens, with design issues remaining in middle management and decisions made on gut feeling rather than concrete evidence.

The authors say that this finding was true in all three industries they surveyed: medical technology, consumer goods and retail banking.

The findings confirm other research - such as the 2018 Design Economy report by The Design Council - which have detailed the business value of design and also quantified the UK's design sector including the numbers of design firms and employees, exports and productivity.

See more statistics and reasons to work with the UK design sector here.