In this paper, Beal Institute Chief Scientist Robert K. Logan and Director of Research Greg Van Alstyne explore the roles of designer, client, user, and other parties essential to the design process, and the relationships between them. The authors interrogate the interactions between bottom-up processes of emergence and those characteristically top-down activities of the designer that together give rise to a design ecosystem, capable of supporting the emergence of innovative design. They describe that environment in which the designer operates and characterize the design ecosystem’s dynamic, interdependent processes. Finally, they seek to understand the design of successful innovations of the past so as to be prescriptive about the future of design.