Design-Related and Design-Focused Research: A Study of Publication Patterns in Design Journals

AbstractIn this paper we examine publication patterns in peer-reviewed journals that publish design research. Our data consists of 4727 articles and their citations as published in 11 journals over a ten-year period (2000–2009). These 11 journals are classified as either design-related or design-focused, depending on whether they specialize in design research or related disciplines. Our research findings suggest that the research community publishing in design-related journals is, for the larger part, made up of different institutions and scholars than the research community focusing on design-focused journals. The design-focused journals seem to be less impactful than the design-related journals. Top authors from the design-focused community tend to publish more papers in the design-related journals than the other way around

Strategizing and the initiation of interorganizational collaboration through prospective resourcing

In this paper, we explain how managers establish resource complementarity during their strategizing efforts for interorganizational collaboration. Based on a longitudinal field study at an automotive company, we show that resource complementarity is not given but jointly constructed in interactions with multiple potential partners through recursive cycles of what we refer to as 'prospective resourcing'. Prospective resourcing mediates the interplay of strategizing and collaboration, thereby reversing the prevailing logic that strategy precedes and determines collaboration. Our findings offer insight into resourcing as a mechanism for developing strategic initiatives and shows how external actors may influence strategizing

How design can improve company performance

Emphasising design and including designers in product development teams contributes to new product success. Likewise, involving designers in developing websites and corporate visual identity helps to improve firm image. When taken together this can contribute to improved company performance. These are the main findings of research conducted in a survey of nearly 400 managers in Dutch firms from both manufacturing and service sectors

Exploration and exploitation activities for design innovation

This paper focuses on design innovation: that is, the development of products that are new in terms of products’ appearance, the emotions products evoke, and/or the way they enable customers to express their identity. Although prior research acknowledges the importance of design innovation for product and organisational performance, studies on how to manage design innovation are relatively scarce. The present study attempts to fill this gap by investigating design innovation and its management in terms of the degree of exploration and exploitation activities and designers’ decision freedom when developing new offerings. We collected data on projects in which external design consultancies were actively involved during the development process (n = 83). For each project, we surveyed both the external senior designer a