A new analysis by the Boston-based nonprofit Design Management Institute, whose focus is design management, dishes the numbers to what design junkies thought of all along: that design-driven companies outperformed the Standard & Poor's 500 by 200%.

These 500 are a stock market index of 500 large publicly traded companies. The companies who outperformed them include Coca-Cola, Ford, Herman Miller, Apple, IBM, Nike, Intuit, Newell Rubbermaid, Procter & Gamble, Starbucks, Starwood, Steelcase, Target, Whirlpool, and Walt Disney.

To get the number, DMI partnered with Motiv, an innovation strategy firm, to create the DMI Design Value Index, a list of design-led, publicly traded U.S. companies that meet a set of six design management criteria.

For example, the criteria stipulated that design had to be embedded within the company's organizational structure; design leadership had to exist at senior and divisional levels; and there had to be a senior-level commitment to design's use as an innovation resource and a force for positive change.

The above-mentioned companies were just 15 out of a pool of 75 that met DMI's criteria. They measured the success of this design-led segment of companies against other companies in the stock market, and found that those who put design first had a significant stock market advantage.

This research could also finally convince remaining design skeptics that hiring and effectively managing talented designers really is key to success.