Design-Inspired Innovation

by James Utterback (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA), Bengt-Arne Vedin (Mälardalen University, Sweden), Eduardo Alvarez (VIGIX, Inc.), Sten Ekman (Mälardalen University, Sweden), Susan Walsh Sanderson (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA), Bruce Tether (University of Manchester, UK) & Roberto Verganti (Politecnico di Milano, Italy)

Design-inspired products delight the customer. These make life easier, better or more interesting for the customer. Successful firms do not consider design as a process to understand and satisfy current user needs nor as a way to make a product look better, these firms see design as an innovation strategy. A design-inspired innovation is so simple that it becomes an extension of the user. It creates meaning and a new language. 

Design-Inspired Innovation explores the ways in which communities of art, design, and innovation are merging and influencing each other in the world of material culture to create great new products. What makes products great? What is the role of design firms in creativity and innovation, and how is this role changing? Does a focus on design inspire innovation and enhance the chances of competitive success? What strategies might result in most inspired design and innovation? 

The book reports the results of a study undertaken to explore these questions, which included interviews with the founders of nearly 100 design firms in four countries - Sweden, Italy, England, and the United States. Each approach to design-inspired innovation is well explored with examples across products, companies, industries and markets. 

Iconic Products A design classic is long lived. Some products are design classics because of their extraordinary impact on industries, markets and even economies. A design classic is one that stays attractive for a long time, while being thoroughly transformed under the hood and becomes an iconic product. Iconic products make complexity invisible to the user. 

New ecology of innovation is unfolding. The boundaries of form and function are becoming blurred or, perhaps more accurately, are intersecting. Few products today function well on their own, nor are many services delivered without intensive use of hardware and software. Both are increasingly defined by users' participation and adaptation. 

Need for integration In design-inspired innovation, the balance among technology, market and meaning is unique. None can be neglected. Rather, balance results from a vision about a possible future. This is referred to as an ideal design. The essence of design is wholeness and integration. Understanding each component and making the best component is not a winning strategy, but it is often the implicit path that we take.

Open-Source Innovation Open standards and the increasing use of open source innovation seem to be spreading roles across - indeed, breaking down boundaries. Open standards allow for interaction, compatibility and integration.           

Visualization makes communication easier, ideas tangible more quickly, and, in the rough sketch stage, allows designers to concentrate on the most essential aspects of the idea - the design, the product, the system, or even the service. Design must create an emotional response and tell a story. Design as a noun is visual embodiment; design as a verb to a large extent relies upon visualization and modeling. Sketching offers a creatively stimulating process and offers ways to convey and receive messages about that which is tacit. 

Avenues to Innovation can be adding finishing touches especially for products that are technically-driven, innovating products by interacting with clients, visualization of the inventive idea, corporate image design including brand, stationery, publications, value chain design, innovative process design i.e. design to function also as a management consultancy, innovation contracting, innovation without a client and corporate strategy followed by innovative design. 

Tools such as sketches, blueprints and models, prototyping, analogies and metaphors, storyboards, CAD, are some of the tools employed by the design process. Design firms that introduce a greater number of prototypes may grow more rapidly than those that maintain a tight focus. 

Innovation by disruption The importance of disruptive innovation is not primarily that a dominant design is ultimately overturned. Rather, it is that is broadens the definition of a product category, and this may dramatically expand the market. Innovations are disruptive not because they provide superior function conventionally measured; often, they do not. Instead, to be disruptive an innovation must provide a different and broader functionality. 

Opportunities for all people to maximize their potential and quality of life are broadened through design. An example of a wheelchair with joystick, intelligent controls, products that allow participation in sports and latest to climb chairs broadens human possibilities through design. 

Network The innovation process is more networked and involves a greater number of actors - users, design firms and suppliers. The more the actors there are in a design complex, the more diverse and varied are these actors. Further, the richer the degree of communication links among them, the greater will be their propensity to innovate. 

Design-Inpired Inovation is an important contribution to better understanding the hidden role that design plays in the innovation process - from the product to the enterprise itself - and the different skills, methodologies and sensibilities that designers bring to innovation. In design-inspired innovation - that is, an innovation that proposes breakthrough messages - the driver of innovation is neither technology (although technology is crucial as a means to create new meanings) nor a customer requirement. Rather, it results from a vision about the possible future. 

Shamin Kamat, Student - Welingkar Institute of Management Bangalore