Business managers and leaders now recognize the importance of design and design thinking in formulating business strategies, co-creation and implementation of integrated management decisions. Design has become the key to developing and delivering innovative products and processes leading to market success in the business arena today. The need for strategically managing creative design process becomes significant in the profile of not only managers but also designers. The Strategic Design Management (SDM) programme at NID has evolved around the idea of Design Thinking as a strategic management tool. The SDM programme aims to develop human resources for the corporate, government and the socially important sectors who would understand the emerging issues from a context specific and systemic perspective. SDM programme caters to the need of developing new breed of managers, who are skilled at working with a wide range of multi-disciplinary inputs in order to achieve holistic and sustainable business solutions. In all, SDM education caters to business aspects of design in a design thinking paradigm in an integrated way. As a design manager, a person is involved with strategies, action plans and processes. Critical functions such as innovation management, managing new product development, retail design management, competitive analysis, trend forecasting, design audit and sustainability are in the ambit of the design manager. It also involves design research, scenario building, brand management, designing communication strategies and social development. They can also perform applied research in design management with a view to develop new tools, methods and processes. The students who complete the programme successfully will be well equipped to enter any industry or consultancy as strategic designers, design entrepreneurs, design managers, contributing either as team member oras team leaders. Many of our graduates are performing the above tasks.