Corporate Design Strategy defined (back in 1989)

For some time now, I have been interested in finding out more about the practice of design strategy within corporations, from the point of view of the in-house strategic design team. More specifically I wanted to read about the differences, nuances, and constrains of applying the traditional design process that most design consultancies use nowadays in a corporate setting (with all the advantages and disadvantages this approach carries).

After much 'googling', I came across a New York Times article from 1989 titled 'Designing for profit'(1989) which, many years before the whole innovation hype sparked, had a very simple way to refer to the practice, and an even simpler (if not obvious by nowadays standards) definition for it:

"A few corporations have developed a ''corporate design strategy'' as a way of projecting the design of their full range of products three to five years into the future. The Xerox Corporation's design strategy, culminating in the most recent 50 series of copiers, has been a key factor in that company's dramatic recovery of lost market share. The model 1075, the first copier to come from this strategy in 1983, was one of the most successful products Xerox has introduced."
It's seems like 'Corporate Design Strategy' seems like a very suitable and descriptive name (quite aligned to its sibling 'Strategic Design Consultancy'), but confusingly enough, when you keep on searching for these keywords, you end up coming across many articles that refer to the practice of 'corporate [brand] design strategy', i.e. logotypes, imagotypes, and the way they are applied across media.

Can a professional practice mature and progress without a commonly agreed term that helps aggregate discussions among its members to define its boundaries? Remember the verbal wars fought in discussion boards between Information Architects during the Internet bubble days to see who was right about what really defined IA? Is there anything to be learned from this?