Contemporary society features a rapid evolution and change in demand that require new solutions, different from those created in the last years. Companies cannot continue to work and produce within their own perimeter: it is necessary to consider the collaborations among different disciplines and players.

In this panorama, in recent years, Strategic Design has played a key role in enabling various companies to differentiate themselves in the market. Strategic Design aims to define, through a design approach, the strategy embracing product, service and communication elements that a company uses to create an identity, define itself on the market and shape its mission. The use of Strategic Design allows the company to develop a set of specific strategic results.

These results are also the outcome of the multinature of Strategic Design that spans the worlds of Management and Design.

Adopting Strategic Design involves the development of critical thinking skills: it gives the possibility to solve complex problems quickly and efficiently.

Over the years, several attempts have been made to create an abacus of tools to support the application of Strategic Design. However, these collections often draw on pre-existing tools from the world of management or design.

This article focuses on an investigation made on 20 companies, showing how the most useful tools for fully exploiting the features of Strategic Design are customized tools. Given the dual nature of the discipline, in fact, many show the need to create ad hoc tools that fully exploit the mix of design and management that lies at the heart of the discipline. The article presents which tools are most common and useful. Understanding their application supports designers' critical thinking and facilitates complex problem-solving in companies.

Keywords: Design education, strategic design, tools, innovation.