The Craftsmanship of Value Creation: When Design Meets Strategy in the Age of AI
By Suhit Anantula, Author of “The Helix Blueprint” & Kasia Rosa
Design becomes strategic through curation, decision, and evaluation.
Strategy becomes designerly through empathy, system mapping, and iterative rules.
- Suhit Anantula
This quote isn’t just a clever turn of phrase. It’s the crux of what’s breaking—and what needs to be rebuilt—in how organisations create value today.
Many leaders still experience strategy as a linear event: a big workshop, a hefty document, a signed-off plan. But in a world of accelerating change, from AI disruption to climate shifts and demographic transitions, these old methods feel increasingly fragile. Strategic plans are often outdated before the ink dries.
So what now?
It’s time to reimagine strategy not as a static product but as an evolving craft. One that blends the best of two worlds: the precision and coherence of strategic thinking with the empathy, experimentation, and learning orientation of design.
Design Becomes Strategic
Design is no longer just about visual identity or product interfaces. True design, at its core, is about intentional creation. It's about understanding the world as it is—through research, empathy, and observation—and then deliberately shaping what could be.
Design becomes strategic when it moves beyond surface aesthetics to grapple with:
Curation – What’s worth paying attention to?
Decision – Which options align with our purpose?
Evaluation – How do we know we’re creating real value?
Strategy Becomes Designerly
On the flip side, traditional strategy has often been allergic to ambiguity. It prefers certainty, forecasts, and control. But the world doesn’t play along.
That’s why strategy must become more designerly—comfortable with messiness, guided by empathy, and fluent in iteration. This means:
Empathy – Starting with people: customers, staff, communities.
System Mapping – Seeing the whole, not just the parts.
Iterative Rules – Testing, learning, and evolving as a core practice.
Introducing the Execution Engine: Iterative Design
At the heart of this fusion lies the Iterative Design Framework—the engine behind The Helix Blueprint. It enables a continuous flow between sensing, shaping, and scaling value.
The five stages:
Perceive – Empathise, research, surface insights.
Perform – Ideate, prototype, test multiple options.
Portfolio – Curate, evaluate, select what moves forward.
Pause or Pursue – Make decisions, refine, implement.
Progress – Learn from action, adapt, evolve.
It turns planning from a one-off act into an ongoing discipline. It’s how organisations can stop being reactive and start becoming adaptive.
Enter AI: The Augmentation Engine
Now add AI to the mix—not as a replacement, but as an amplifier.
Think of AI as your tireless co-pilot, helping at every stage:
Synthesising vast research during Perceive
Fueling creative ideas in Perform
Running scenarios and analysis in Portfolio
Aiding decision intelligence in Pause or Pursue
Powering reflection and learning loops in Progress
But here’s the catch: AI is only as good as the questions we ask, the frameworks we follow, and the values we hold. That’s why human-centered design is more essential than ever.
Crafting Value in a New Era
This is what Part 1 of our PMI Adelaide series is all about: helping you channel your organisation’s energy where it truly matters.
No fluff. Just grounded, practical, human-centered strategy tools designed for this new era—an age where thinking and doing can finally merge, powered by AI, but always led by humans.
Join Us: April 30th – “The Craftsmanship of Value Creation”
If you're in Adelaide and ready to think differently about value, strategy, and technology, join us for this free event. You’ll get the first look at the Helix Blueprint and walk away with tools you can use right away.
🗓️ 30th April 2025
📍 BDO, Level 7, 420 King William St, Adelaide
🕠 5:30 pm
💌 Register via: events@pmiadelaide.org