Cai Jun

Biography

Cai Jun, Professor, PhD Supervisor Since 1990s, changes in modern industry and development of global economy have redefined design and its content. With its increasing influence on corporate innovation and economy, design is playing an increasing important role in corporate strategy and the market. Design Strategy and Management focuses on the user-and-market-centered corporate design strategies and management systems that enterprises make to cope with the global competition and challenge. It explores how to deal with the relationship between the design development and market environment, how to decide the direction of its design development and its competition strategies, how to decide the corporate culture reflected in design, and how to make and carry out the decided development plan and action program. While design strategy involves the medium and long term planning of the enterprise and the strategic planning and development direction of its products, design management focuses on the implementation of the route, planning and resource regulations of strategic planning. Both design strategy and management center on the enterprise’s integrated innovation in its brand, culture, cost, technology and services and the management and application in this process. The research and education in this field is only available in a few universities in China and it gets more and more attention home and abroad. Some of the researches combined with case studies and the research projects have been accepted and implemented by enterprises.   2、Contemporary Western Design Theories： The theoretical system of contemporary Western design has gone through an important period in 1960s and many new ideas and theories were put forward in 1980. Due to the new structure of social material production, the interaction between global economy and local culture, ecology, environment protection, high technologies and their influences on social culture, we should transfer from the conception mode and theoretical understanding of the artistic design in the traditional industrialized period to the post-industrial and information society. This research focuses on the development and changes in design conception from industrialized society to post-industrial and information society since the last century, reviews its theoretical system and development process in the historical order, summarizes the main schools and doctrines, makes clear the evaluation system, criticism system and focuses of attention of western design theories in different stages since1920s, and describes and analyzes important theoretical issues and ideas, so as to offer advices to the artistic design in China who is in the similar social development stage. This research project has been sponsored by China Social Science Projects 2010. The research team of five has begun the pre-research preparations and the related reports and books will be published in 2013.

Research Interest

Design Strategy and Management Contemporary Western Design Theories