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This site is a living/changing/growing site for the clients, partners and friends of Duffy & Shanley. Duffy & Shanley is an advertising, public relations and marketing firm based in Providence, Rhode Island. Providence, Rhode Island, is located 50 minutes south of Boston and is New England’s second largest city. Cities are incorporated municipal centers with high concentrations of residents. The Residents are a seminal performance-art band from San Francisco who made waves with their parody of the Beatles.

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Profit by Design

When a company incorporates design discipline into its brand character, the results can be dramatic. Bill Foulkes, a former brand manager with Gillette and champion of the union of business & design, discusses the collaboration and positive potential of this critical partnership. —Jeremy Duffy

Creating an enduring, persuasive brand is the second greatest challenge any business faces today.

The first? Developing an innovative and creative culture to create, develop, and execute the brand.

Two years ago this month, A.G. Lafley, the CEO of Procter & Gamble, declared how he would develop this culture for the century-old branding pioneer and leader. In June 2005, he stated that P&G would differentiate itself and seek growth through design.

Brighter colors? More stylized toothbrushes? Not exactly, although P&G is certainly capable of improving and profiting from such tinkering.

What he sought, and continues to build, is a culture of design – thinking.

Design, at its core, a problem solving and, even more importantly, a problem definition, discipline. Design thinking brings a deeper understanding of customer behavior and needs. It offers critical skills to synthesize different, and often conflicting, trends and ideas. It moves beyond style and form and function into the dynamics of customer experience, supplier relationships and the definition of industries.

Ask design school drop out Steve Jobs how design-thinking can revolutionize an industry. A.G. Lafley wanted his iPod.

We have only begun to quantify the success of design thinking in the United States, but most European and Asian nations, with national design councils have done extensive research on the increased equity values achieved by “design-driven” companies.

As the international business world embraces design at an accelerated rate, the Center for Design and Business (CDB) finds itself dramatically evolving from its regional economic. It has built a strong foundation to champion the emerging discipline of design thinking.

Established in 1997 as a joint venture between RISD and Bryant University, the CDB was created to unite the core strengths of design and business throughout the region. Over the past 10 years, the CDB has been able to explore and implement design as a critical element of business strategy, and to communicate its “best case” examples at its annual Success By Design conference.

Earlier this spring, the CDB launched a revised website, to be the core of its network of case studies, educational partnerships and ongoing projects that demonstrate design-thinking in action. Nearly five decades of RISD’s successful work with the world’s best known organizations, such as Intel, NASA, General Mills, Maytag, forms the foundation of this innovation knowledge base.

It is our hope that this database will serve as an educational tool for firms ranging from local small companies to international giants.

The education, we hope, will provide managers with the skills to face their greatest challenge – unlocking creativity.