Strategic design: where are we now? Reflection around the foundations of a recent discipline

The term Strategic Design is increasingly adopted in order to define approaches and methods to develop research and projects at a company or academic level. What do we mean when we say Strategic Design? After more than a decade of reflections, teaching and professional activities around this topic, the foundations of the discipline are established. Basically, we assert that Strategic Design is about conferring to social and market bodies a system of rules, beliefs, values and tools to deal with the external environment, thus being able to evolve (and so to survive successfully) as well as maintaining and developing one’s own identity. And, in doing so, influencing and changing the environment too. This paper intends to present a theoretical analysis of Strategic Design by pointing out some of the key points of this discipline, moving from the recent reflections and developments within the Italian and the international scientific community. Keywords: strategy, service design, sustainability.