Abstract
This paper investigates strategic design in practice by analysing how organizations describe designers’ work in 232 job advertisements across the Nordic countries. Building on literature that positions strategic design as both strategy formulation (SF) and strategy implementation (SI), we identified explicit signs of SF and SI in the descriptions of designers’ tasks in the ads. Our findings show that Strategy implementation appeared in all ads, while strategy formulation was present in 104 roles (44.8%), mainly in senior-level positions. These SF activities included, for example, aligning design and product strategies with business objectives, leading product development and product management, driving strategic projects, setting design direction, and owning and developing design or discovery processes. We contribute to strategic design research and education by offering a detailed, evidence-based view of how expectations for strategic design are currently expressed in design practice.
Keywords
strategic design; strategy formulation; strategy implementation; job advertisements, design education
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.937
Citation
Nicoletti Dziobczenski, P.R., and Björklund, T. (2026) Strategic design in practice: Mapping strategy formulation and implementation in Nordic design job advertisements, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.937
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Strategic design in practice: Mapping strategy formulation and implementation in Nordic design job advertisements
This paper investigates strategic design in practice by analysing how organizations describe designers’ work in 232 job advertisements across the Nordic countries. Building on literature that positions strategic design as both strategy formulation (SF) and strategy implementation (SI), we identified explicit signs of SF and SI in the descriptions of designers’ tasks in the ads. Our findings show that Strategy implementation appeared in all ads, while strategy formulation was present in 104 roles (44.8%), mainly in senior-level positions. These SF activities included, for example, aligning design and product strategies with business objectives, leading product development and product management, driving strategic projects, setting design direction, and owning and developing design or discovery processes. We contribute to strategic design research and education by offering a detailed, evidence-based view of how expectations for strategic design are currently expressed in design practice.