Design is a business. And business is good.

Title: Design in Tech Report 2017
Context: If you’re a designer (and I’m assuming that you are) then good news: one day soon, business might actually start to perhaps appreciate what you bring to the table.
Synopsis: The value of design to a company’s success, and more importantly its bottom line, cannot be understated. Well, actually it can. We know that it can because it very often is. Oh, sure, companies will talk a good game about being design-centric and leveraging design thinking, but in many cases these remain empty promises offered as a sop to the uninitiated right before business as usual is resumed. Unfortunately for them (and conversely fortunate for us) that type of duplicity is about to go the way of the dot-com-bust as the overwhelming evidence doesn’t just allude to, it definitively proves!, that design is perhaps the most powerful leveler in the marketplace of ideas at the current time. Execution and technology remain foundational, but an inability to deliver on the promise of “design-centricity” is soon detected by customers unwilling to tolerate a subpar experience simply because it’s no longer a take-it-or-leave-it world. Design is no longer just transforming products, it is transforming markets and businesses themselves, and let us be clear: a foolish business and its lack of design legitimacy are soon defunct.
Best Bit: “Designers are needed to make the complex challenges of security actionable and understandable. It’s a great opportunity for design leadership: complex problems with multiple stakeholders and an urgent need for human-centered thinking.”

via designintechreport.wordpress.com