Strategy is the most
upstream form of design.
Before pixels, before prototypes, before anything — there's the question of whether we're solving the right problem.
The most significant shift in my thinking at Parsons was learning when to step back from the problem entirely. Most people enter a business challenge at the subject level — optimizing a product, fixing a process, refining a feature.
What strategic design taught me is to first ask whether the problem is subject-level at all, or whether a system is producing it. That distinction determines everything. Which tools apply, which stakeholders hold leverage, where design intervention actually makes sense. Frameworks like Dark Matter, Three Horizons, Liedtka's design principles for strategy, and the BCG Strategy Palette each operate differently depending on the business goal, time horizon, and nature of uncertainty in play. The skill isn't knowing them. It's knowing which one the situation calls for.
Much of this thinking was shaped by my professor Raz Godelnik, whose work on strategic design continues to influence how I approach complex problems.
BCG Strategy Palette
Designers are often brought in after the strategy is set. The BCG Strategy Palette is what I use to push back on that dynamic. Before I define a design direction, I need to know which strategic environment the business is actually operating in — predictable, adaptive, harsh, or visionary — because each one demands a fundamentally different design logic.
The mistake most designers make is applying the same design process regardless of context. When I was analyzing Beryl Consulting's positioning in the investment advisory space, the Palette helped me identify that the firm was operating in an Adaptive environment while designing for a Classical one.
Three Horizons
Three Horizons is the framework I use most, and one of the most widely applied in industry because it holds across almost any strategic context. What I've observed is that tech-driven mindsets tend to gravitate toward H2, where innovation feels most tangible. But H2 is the hardest horizon to define without anchoring it first.
My practice is to establish H1 and H3 before engaging the middle. Without those anchors, H2 drifts into either uncritical optimism or strategic paralysis.
When I do reach H2, Roger Martin's question from the Strategic Choice Structuring Process sharpens the work further: "What would have to be true for this transition to be possible?" It moves the conversation from speculation into testable conditions. In my current project designing a sustainability layer for Google Maps, the work sits in H2+. Google's existing eco-certification infrastructure is H1. A world where sustainable choices are effortless and invisible is H3. The design question only becomes precise once both ends are established.
Referenced · Roger Martin's Strategic Choice Structuring Process
Liedtka's 10 Design Principles for Strategy
This is the one that most directly explains why I sit at the intersection of design and strategy rather than choosing a side. Liedtka's argument is that the cognitive tools designers use — abductive reasoning, prototyping as hypothesis testing, empathy as data — are exactly what strategy formation requires but rarely has. I use this framework less as a checklist and more as a lens for facilitating strategic conversations with non-designers.
Make strategy-making broadly participative and dialogue-based
Hold two-way strategic conversations across the organization
Work iteratively and experimentally
Start with possibilities, then consider constraints
Lead by persuasion — and, at best, by inspiration
Design a 'purposeful space' — form follows intended outcomes
Strategy as Synthesis
Formulation and Implementation as One Process
Abductive and Creative Thinking
Design for flexibility and emergent opportunity