op-quartile companies make user- centric design everyone’s responsibility, not a siloed function. In the tired caricature of traditional design departments, a group of tattooed and aloof people operate under the radar, cut off from the rest of the organization. Considered renegades or mavericks by their colleagues, these employees (in the caricature) guard access to their ideas, complaining that they have too often been burned by narrow- minded engineering or marketing heads unwilling to (or incapable of) realizing the designers’grand visions. We are not suggesting that this stereotype is still common—or that other functions are necessarily to blame—but it can be surprisingly resilient. One company we know, for example, unveiled a new flagship design studio to much jubilation from the design community. Before long, all the designers had moved their desks inside the studio, and had deactivated door access for the marketing, engineering, and quality teams. These moves drastically reduced the level of cooperative work and undermined the performance of the business as a whole. Our research suggests that overcoming isolationist tendencies is extremely valuable. One of the strongest correlations we uncovered linked top financial performers and companies that said they could break down functional silos and integrate designers with other functions. More Than a Department: It’s Cross-functional Talent The Business Value of Design