Design Avenues to Innovation

 

 Bengt-Arne Vedin and Sten Ekman

 

Bengt-Arne Vedin, PhD                                             Sten Ekman, PhD

vedin@stockholm.mail.telia.com                            sten.ekman@mdh.se

Adjunct professor of innovation management     Head of department

Department for Innovation, Design, and Product Development, IDP

Mälardalen University

Box 325

SE-631 05 Eskilstuna

Sweden

 

Abstract. Design no longer implies just adding attractive exteriors to products after development has been concluded. Nine ways of employing design to produce innovations are identified: 1) Designers engaged in development projects early on, interactively, 2) Visualization used as a key route to conceptualizing and selling ideas, 3) Innovation the designer`s very brief, 4) Wholesale corporate image design, 5) Value chain design, 6) Design of the client`s innovation organization, 7) Innovation, product development outsourced to a design firm, 8) Speculative idea development without any customer yet, 9) Design of a client`s overall strategy. Ways to benefit from design-driven innovation are suggested.

We take the importance of innovation for firms` and nations` competitiveness as a given. Thus there is any number of suggestions on how to foster innovation, within existing companies and through the creation of new enterprise. There are life cycle models linking innovative behavior to the stage of technological development, traps that should be avoided have been identified or suggested though some seem unavoidable, and there are methods for evaluating ideas and organizational features.

 

Innovation stems from creativity, something sometimes defined as "generating new combinations". Thus combining knowledge from seemingly unrelated fields, seeing the problem entirely differently, and posing dumb, fundamental questions belong to the prescriptions for innovation suggested. But not just any dumb questions, not just looking differently without any perspective, and you don`t just acquire competency from vastly different fields without any reason or driving force. One avenue to arrive at all this is through the employment of industrial designers. Over the last quarter century, industrial design has graduated from styling, adding superficial attractiveness to a product essentially finalized, to become more of an integral part of innovation activities. This has been underscored by consultants such as Tom Peters[1], researchers such as Dorothy Leonard[2], and policy makers such as those behind Britain`s Millennium Products campaign or the Finnish government`s design initiative.

 

The impetus for this study came from a visit by one of the authors to a large American industrial design firm in 1997. Since then, we have interviewed all larger Swedish industrial design firms (with five or more employees), and some smaller as well, particularly actively involved in innovation. In addition, we have visited with and interviewed a few international such firms also. Through an informal group of researchers (see acknowledgements), we have been able to gather further information from other countries, especially the US[3]. While we had the idea of "mapping" in particular the Swedish industrial design industry in its entirety - the subject for another report - our focus was also very much on the various ways in which industrial designers contribute to innovation. In yet another, third report, we will try to comment on how they regard and describe "the design process".

 

Many companies rely to a large extent, and some of them entirely, upon internal design facilities. We have met companies like Artemide that stress innovation internally all the while working with both external and internal designers. Festo Pneumatics in Germany (recognized with the Red-Dot award) is a wonderful example of a producer of a very mundane product line, equipment for pressurized air, which is consciously and prominently investing in design[4]. BMW is one example of several necessarily design conscious and innovation prone companies that offer design services also to outside customers, one reason being the additional stimulus and impulses thus generated.

 

We have chosen to concentrate on industrial design consultancies because in several ways that makes issues regarding design-driven innovation more acute: if innovation is critical to corporate survival, shouldn`t it be a core competency and core resource internally? Why, how, and to what extent may it be outsourced? What`s the relationship with that outside source, a specialist in styling and form, and what does it mean that the outsider has other customers as well?

 

Design and innovation in the literature

 

Blaich[5] has, from the vantage point of a practitioner, stressed design-driven innovation as one salient feature, all the while defining "design [as] a plan for making a change". His triangle, focusing on product and product range it its middle, and with marketing, engineering, and industrial design visions at the corners, is often quoted, both in the literature[6] and by other practitioners. In an exhibition in 1990 to commemorate a quarter century of Danish industrial design prizes, the very title was "Innovation via Design"[7]. "The good designer continues... to reformulate the goals... They are people... with a preference for ´insoluble` problems... " Lorenz[8] exemplifies what he calls design-led innovation and quotes a designer who exceeds his brief innovatively because he is "employed to be creative".

 

Sometimes such design-driven innovation is also seen in a perspective of technological development stages[9], e g, at Sony. Trueman brings uncertainty, a key characteristic of radical ideas, into the picture, design suggested as a means to reduce it[10]. Several authors stress the fact that industrial designers as technology or knowledge brokers ("boundary work"[11]) may serve as agents for innovation[12] [13]. While talking of "new product changes" and "new-product development", Lester et al give design an even larger role than as an engine for innovation[14]: it is an (interpretative) approach to apply to management in general. While underlining design as a possible driving force to innovation, Cooper et al focus on relations ("alliances") between the designer and the client organization[15]; both are influential, and innovation may be "invisible`. There must be a "key individual/design champion".

 

Eppinger has developed an instrument for facilitating and speeding up (engineering) design, the Design Structure Matrix, emphasizing innovation over redesign[16]. His instrument serves as an important means to improve communication. Eppinger`s matrix is the foundation for a massive tome on modular design[17], using six operators to create value and indeed innovation: splitting, substituting, augmenting, excluding, inverting, and porting. In a study of some thirty firms, Borja de Mozota[18] saw design as providing these with

-   economic competence: creating value to primary functions

-   managerial competence: creating value to support functions

-   resource competence: creating value to the value chain system

Heskett is concerned with when and where in the product development process design is included, indeed integrated[19]. Chayutsahakij and Poggenpohl rely upon the two-by-two matrix of market and technology, known and new, with usability stressed for the combination new technology and known market, symbolic concern at the core in the opposite corner or new market and known technology[20]. When both market and technology are known, there may be either a case for usability development or one for visual communication and formal design language development. For the five situations so identified, they go on to discuss seven user research characteristics and likewise seven analytic models for user behavior. Thus, e g, the flow model, helping to understand stakeholder relationships, is critical to new technology introduction but not for the case when technology is known, while ergonomics have an impact just for usability development.

 

Findings

 

Different industrial design consultancies have different specialties and profiles, responding to customer base, i e, their market, and also corresponding to the competencies and predilections of the individuals employed. Furthermore, customers, projects, and briefs may vary greatly. Relations with customers tend to be long-lived. Thus the brief for an early or new product family project might well be "radical innovation" whereas refinements or add-on products within the same series, family, or style may be regarded as just new expressions of something already existing. The very same industrial design consultancy may also sometimes be chartered to provide for innovation, take such initiatives by itself, or actively work with an inventor, all the while being engaged in more traditional styling projects simultaneously. Of course our descriptions are stylized and the practitioner may find that categories overlap from time to time.

 

Just the finishing touch: this is the traditional basis where the product is ready or given by its very technology, perhaps by its engineering design, perhaps in producer goods where technical features are what counts. It is more than fair to say that this is, volume-wise, still the foundation for the industrial design industry. The development is towards more and more design consciousness, though, e g, for those previously entirely anonymous producer goods. "For the Japanese market, this electronic system should project power and still be small and compact. For other markets, the customer wants another outer design, to suit the tastes and cultures there. We don`t get involved in the technology but are working to make the units easy to service." Or with another quote: "Design is culturally dependent."

 

Involved in innovation projects interactively: this is where the design firm acts as an equal partner in the work to produce what will become an innovation. More and more, this is what industrial designers prefer. They feel that their broader view can be truly productive, inducing, e g, the customer to change from one type of material in the product to another, or from one type of manufacturing process to one in an entirely different category. It turns out the industrial designers from a consultancy may help bridge not just between different customers but also between different departments within the customer corporation. The designers are seen as impartial, they are engaged at the corporate level, and they are much more prone to understand the different languages in, e g, marketing, manufacturing, and research and development. Their concern is for the entire system, for an all-encompassing approach. Sometimes customers are wont to profit from this because of shortsighted penny-pinching: "sometimes their engineers make lastÐminute modifications that destroy much of the value we have added. And they do so because they see only our hourly fees, not the economic and other qualities that would have resulted had they entrusted us with also those late or detail modifications."

 

Visualization of the inventive idea: especially, this is the situation when the design consultancy has been engaged by an inventor or sometimes a venture capital firm or alike, involved in refining a promising idea. Most often, designers come up with important additions to that original idea. To a large extent, it is the very visualization of the idea that allows for improvements. "The inventor is both happy and awed when s/he for the first time encounters the abstract idea in a 3D rendering on the computer screen." Many inventors lack sufficient knowledge about manufacturing practicalities, materials characteristics and selection, whereas the industrial designer either already has this knowledge or knows where to find it. Some inventors have started production, marketing, and selling on the basis of the visualizations produced by the design consultancy, others have succeeded in selling the idea to a company or an investor because that very visualization makes the idea look much more "finalized" than it really is. We found one Swedish industrial design consultancy that is specializing entirely on the inventor category. Thus they have developed a "service package" so as to provide a functioning service for the limited fee an individual inventor can afford (in practice, the service package is made more customized than what the designation implies). Some of their inventor customers have, when interviewed by us, been extremely happy with the service (though we didn`t search for any unhappy ones!) and in some cases they regard the designers as part of a team pursuing the invention long after the end of the initial "package" service. Several other consultancies also work with inventors in much the same way. One large engineering firm, though, proclaimed that they felt individual inventors a bad match for them, "too small projects to fit us so we have decided not to get involved". Yet another large consultancy, heavily involved with the automotive industry, had tried "but so far our three or so attempts have been less than successful". The idea that the inventor should pay through the proceeds from the product, with a royalty, is seen as impossible resource-wise for the smaller firms, unwieldy for the larger.

 

v>Design-driven innovation, innovation the brief: starting from design, from dreams and visions. This is the kind of approach that triggered our interest first. The designer, prodded maybe by the customer firm, poses a challenging question, "wouldn`t it be great if... ?" Several of the design firms offering this approach try to stay very close to the frontiers of research and new technology, to be able to rely upon new breakthroughs in making "dreams happen". At the same time, important input is most often generated through the keen and unbiased observation of end users. Again, several of the design consultancies stress the importance of getting "inside the end user" avoiding even that end user`s own descriptions of needs and user behavior. This is often the fallacy of focus groups or interviews where the user is the captive of an ingrained perception. "We try to uncover the end user`s tacit knowledge, silent language." Apart from videotaping and close observation, this might entail the design and production of new and unique measuring apparatuses. Sometimes the "dream" may be more of the order of surviving against low-cost imports through innovative features.

 

Wholesale corporate image design: this would include, apart from product design, brand, stationary, publications, exhibitions, and web design - and more. Here, again, the application of a broader perspective is sometimes conducive to innovation. Not all industrial design consultancies are of course equipped to provide an all-inclusive services offer but some do this through a network of suppliers and partners. We might see this type of service as a step on the way towards strategy design, see below. Particularly when it comes to brand development but also for some types of products/services web design may be an important route to new innovative ideas. We have found no firms specializing in precisely this direction so it is rather a sometime mode of operations; our Italian colleagues report more of dedication to this particular route.

 

Value chain design: choice of production methods, design of supplier network. This is when the design consultancy takes the lead also in evaluating and choosing the materials used in the new innovative product, and in finding suppliers for materials, machinery, and possibly sub-contractors for all or part of the manufacturing. This is something that might happen for those working with and for independent inventors, refining and elaborating upon an idea. In one American design firm[21], at least, they have built up a production capacity of their own, to meet customers` needs for manufacturing. It goes without saying that the transfer of information from design to production here is swift and smooth.

 

Innovation process design: acting as a management consultancy. Normally, a design consultancy would not be equipped to offer management or organizational design services but if the aim is to improve upon creativity and to make for an organization more prone to design induced innovation, at least a larger design consultancy may play an important role. They would have internal experiences of course, and again, as with technology, materials, and production, they may act as transfer agents between client companies, most often in different industries. We have met a limited number of examples, and none in Sweden, of this modus operandi. Perhaps we may regard writing the design manual for a client company as a halfway measure in the same vein.

 

Innovation outsourcing: this is when the design firm is completely in charge of a clients` innovation development. We observed this for production-oriented corporations in Asia, hoping to enter western markets or specialized niches on their bases of low labor and capital costs. Realizing that such competitive advantages are transient and make them vulnerable, many feel that they should rather upgrade the products to widen profit margins - one way being the niche approach mentioned. Western companies, experiencing such competition, may opt for excellence in, e g, ergonomics, employing design consultancy expertise for developing whole product lines with robust competitive advantages because of a combination between research based designs, completeness of the offer, and coherence of design, instruction manuals, and promotional material. Yet another variation is found with engineering consultancies, where not just design drives innovation but other capabilities also, e g, computation and manufacturing insights.

 

Innovation without any client: idea generation and development as a speculative undertaking, "find a customer if it works". Here we met the design consultancy wanting to see whether their expertise in designing seating for automotive needs might be translated into innovative chairs. Themselves satisfied with the outcome, they succeeded in selling the design to a furniture maker. The product was so successful that the designers received follow-up orders for a whole line of chairs. In another firm, the designer challenged himself to come up with a novel stool concept, with a symmetrical joint, and the stool doubling as a walking stick; well, at least a supporting stick. This product is now found in a little less than 200 museums around the world. In yet another design firm, a designer thought it a challenge to develop a lamp for a new light source. When he sold the design to a lamp manufacturer, it turned out that the producer too had attempted to achieve the same trick but that the industrial designer had included several more smart details in his solution. As a follow-up project, the designer developed a lamp eliminating the flickering on the CAD screens. And so we have a design firm where the impetus for such an innovative design without any customer was one of the designers` frustration with the lack of a particular safety product for a hobby of his. The solution developed suited very well to a client company of old, and could readily be placed there. Speaking of frustration: another design firm again speaks of ´frustration analysis` as their preferred route to the discovery of urgent needs - a select group of people are asked to note down, for a day or two, just every awkward detail in their daily experience. The devil in the details - and impulses to innovative designs also! At least one of the Swedish design consultancies had created a research foundation, setting aside profits to make it possible to engage in uncertain projects with no paying customer.

 

Corporate strategy first, then innovative designs: this includes defining key gatekeepers, supply and logistics system, and potential retailing leverage. When it comes to corporate culture, the strategy design firm has to function as a management consultancy. The client`s ´identity` is determined by characteristics such as physical base; history; geographical factors; etc. Its mission is defined by the very core of its business offer, consisting of products. The common ground established, then, has to be communicated, in the product and thus in product design, but also in graphics design and packaging, in environmental features such as architecture, spatial feeling, and digital milieus. Distribution is the last factor. For those different specialties, the challenge is to pinpoint the most appropriate specialists in the world. This means that there is no fixed, set, and ready network but rather the competency and faculty of the design strategists to locate and engage the ones most appropriate for the particular project. Among the characteristics nailed down, we find positioning, launch structure system (to prepare for the eventual launch implementation), and resource research. Among the services delivered we find design direction and perception management (which includes getting the crew on board).

 

- - -

 

Even this list of ten relationships between design and innovation does not cover all different aspects. As mentioned previously, Alvarez found one design firm that had invested in production facilities to make it possible to service the customer even with this facility. He also located another design firm that had not just ventured into developing innovations at their own risk and without any customer but then had gone as far as to start producing and selling products themselves.

 

The following map suggests a structuring of the "landscape" of design driven innovation. As we have seen, many projects still belong to the traditional styling variety; that would place this activity low on an axis for the scope of industrial design versus innovation. At the other extreme, design encompassing even strategy development displays a large scope. The first category, traditional styling, is also low on the other axis suggested here, the responsibility of the industrial designer for carrying out - executing - the development of an idea to its final design. Here ´innovation outsourced` and ´innovation without any client` score high, i e, are found to the far right.

 

Conclusion

 

Industrial designers provide a "holistic" view, strive to apply the end user`s perspective, and are adept at visualizing[22]. All three factors are, arguably, conducive to innovation. In addition, industrial designers benefit from technology and impulse transfer between different projects, customers, and industries, and have their customers share this advantage. With the emphasis on form, style, and art, it is obvious that design training is geared at generating creativity.

 

Our interviews display a host of different approaches to design-induced innovation. Conceivably, this is because our analytical schema is too fine-grained; as has been underlined, several design firms apply several different approaches. Customers and projects also vary greatly. A large internationally established company such as Ideo offers a different set of activities from Go Solid with three people focusing upon assisting inventors.

 

A few ideas may be suggested for corporations searching to obtain innovation advantages, relying upon industrial design as an important component. It must be kept in mind, however, that here we rely mostly upon judgments from industrial designers. Some of these assertions may represent how they would prefer relationships to work (tentatively marked with an *), though it might be suggested that a worthwhile research project would be to test these hypotheses. Others, however, coincide with what we know from technology transfer, creative idea generation methods, etc:

¥ rely upon the designers` specialist facility with brainstorming, functional analysis, etc

¥ be aware of, and profit from, the power of visualization

¥ when possible, take the opportunity of reducing new product risk substantially through test marketing and selling relying upon visualizations-only as demos

¥ contemplate whether to engage more than one design firm, to get access to a larger network of competency, of solutions, of previous projects; also to generate ´creative friction` and a larger scope

¥ look for "wide scope" as a personal feature when recruiting designers

¥ ponder the possibility of having internal designers work on some projects completely outside your own company`s charter

¥ allow internal designers leeway to stay in close touch with technology and research frontiers

¥ allow, indeed expect, designers to be creative and innovative, also transcending the limits of their original brief

¥ be aware that involving industrial designers may allow for very compressed development time-tables - and prepare to profit from it*

¥ employ, when applicable, industrial designers to sketch more distant future scenarios, to provoke, alert, and sensitize your organization to long and short term developments*

¥ be open to profit-sharing, i e, royalty agreements with design consultants; by definition, a win-win arrangement should be preferable

¥ be aware that design process descriptions often give a linear description of something much more intricate, and that the description may have been created more to convince customers of the designers` credibility than to serve as a tool for selecting among them - here references, awards, and test projects are better (at least one consultancy had a detailed, conditional decision tree description with its own design language that they preferred to keep to themselves; another presented what was also a conditional, iterative multi-dimensional "process" )

¥ don`t short-change design consultants` work by keeping them from partaking in the "late-minute changes" or practical adjustments - on the other hand, engage them early on*

¥ challenge yourself and your organization from time to time with allowing industrial designers to take a broad approach: strategy design, design of corporate identity, design of innovation organization, of supply chain, etc*

¥ see to it that industrial designers work with all relevant functional departments in your company, such as development, marketing, sales, production, etc - this may apply also outside the company itself, extending to, e g, suppliers*

¥ more generally, be sure that the designers - external as internal - carry sufficient clout*

¥ allow sometimes for design competitions not just between outside consultants but also between them and internal designers*

¥ be open to having design consultants reside within your company during intense projects; likewise, be open to having some of your own personnel working with them, at their premises

¥ be aware of the fact that, internationally, design flavors may be different in different countries but also that creating crosscurrents between different cultures may be beneficial

 

Why is industrial design more of a force to innovation than, say, two decades ago? Globalization has been suggested as one reason, with its concomitant increase in competition and need for adaptation to local cultural habits and alike. Another reason might be the urge to compete in time where the designer`s facility for visualization plays a role. Widening the scope has always been a route to innovation, and here industrial design is a fountainhead. Asking fundamental questions and coming to a problem from new and unexpected angles is another such route - again, intelligent ignorance and queries about styling and form may be bliss.

 

Legend:

¬      Just the finishing touch 1

Р   not much innovation - styling only

¬      Involved in innovation projects 2

Р   early on, interactively

¬      Visualization of the inventive idea 3

- important additions, visualization allowing for improvements

¬      Design-driven innovation 4

Р   innovation the brief - starting from designs, from dreams

¬      Corporate image design 5

Р   including brand, stationary, publications and web design, etc

¬      Value chain design 6

- choice of production methods, design of supplier network

¬      Innovation process design (halfway is: writing the design manual) 7

Р   designing client`s organizational structure, corporate culture for innovation

¬      Innovation outsourced 8

Р   design firm completely in charge of clients` innovation development

¬      Innovation without any client 9

- idea generation and development as a speculative undertaking, "find a customer when ready"

¬      Corporate strategy first, then innovative designs 10

-       including defining, e g, key gatekeepers, logistics & retailing factors

 

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

                                           Scope/extension

 

	10
			Execution responsibility

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Acknowledgements

 

The following design firms have been interviewed - thank you!

A&E Design

Caran

Ergonomidesigngruppen

Formbolaget

Formtech

Go Solid

Hampf Design

Myra

No Picnic

Nya Perspektiv

Peekaboo Design

Propeller

Reload

Semcon

Struktur Industridesign

Ytterborn & Fuentes

White Design

Zenit Design

Ångpanneföreningen

 

The following companies relying upon internal design facilities have been interviewed:

Electrolux

Softronic (computer software design)

 

The following clients to industrial design firms have been interviewed:

ABB Robotics

INSU Innovation Support

Tedak

The Swedish Telecommunications Museum/Telia Research AB

Senseboard

ETAC

 

We gratefully acknowledge ideas and other input from Alessio Marchesi, Susan Sanderson, Bruce Tether, James M Utterback, and Roberto Verganti. One of Utterback`s students, Eduardo Alvarez, has carried out a number of interviews with American design firms and we have been able to incorporate some of his findings here, which we are happy to acknowledge (see reference). Thanks are furthermore due to the Swedish Agency for Innovation Systems for economic support.