Strategic Design: Orchestrating and Leveraging Market-shaping Capabilities

Purpose: This paper aims to conceptualise the interplay of strategic design and market-shaping capabilities.
Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on the emergent scholarly discourses related to strategic design and dynamic markets, this paper merges a contemporary view of markets and market-shaping capabilities with a conceptual exploration of strategic design.
Findings: This paper proposes that the strategic design process can shape markets through orchestrating and leveraging market-shaping capabilities. Specifically, it highlights how these capabilities trigger and facilitate purposeful intent; situated and systemic understanding; and collective collaboration.
Practical implications: Furthering the notion of strategic design, this paper contributes to clarifying how to interpret and use design as a strategic practice in business management.
Originality/value: This paper identifies strategic design as an innovative approach for creating future value-creating systems or markets, and as such, it develops a process framework for market-shaping capabilities, addressing the “how” of market shaping.