What does a competitive cycle look like for a designer?

I’ve been taking a class on Coursera called, Digital Transformation. It’s a four week course on how to help companies continue to thrive and compete through digital transformation and disruption; which I learned is not new as per the examples given for Blockbuster, Kodak and Borders.

I’m really enjoying this course and feel excited to use the strategies suggested in my design practice and perhaps understand and learn more about what’s going on in our world today and why sometimes it feels like it’s going a thousand miles an hour.

Here are a few ways for companies to have more of a competitive edge:

  1. Strengthen intellectual property with things such as patents

  2. Consider complimentary assets and skills

  3. Consider your customer’s loyalty and branding to your services

  4. Imitation - how easy is it for someone else to imitate you?

  5. Diffusion - maybe creating an idea that is really fun and copied by all then fizzes out; also isn’t such a bad idea

  6. Be the second mover - maybe you aren’t the first mover like Amazon did with books; but maybe you can be the second mover like Lyft and take a dominant space in the marketplace

I applied my design career to the Competitive Cycle the instructor made and this is what I learned:

Competitive Cycle - Wynne Leung

I learned that we can speculate that I have seven more years in the mature phase; and then I will go back to the disrupt phase. It feels both exciting and reassuring. I’m excited for what’s to come. Next week we’ll be learning about how artificial intelligence, big data and robotics will “shake up” this digital transformation.

On the other hand, not so logically… How this cycle just like seasons is natural and necessary. It is necessary for something to die in the Winter so that new can grow in the Spring. The idea of renewal is so natural. Here is where I’m at all the time. Sitting between art and logic. Somehow really needing to measure all the time, but on the other hand and heart knowing that there is a beauty in the natural ways that things will happen on its’ own, when it’s ready.

Wynne

DesignWynne Leung