Design scoreboard: capturing design spending in firms

The value of design is increasingly recognised, but design is often overlooked in favour of R&D in the measurement of innovation. Design is difficult to define, which makes it difficult to measure in financial terms. R&D was previously considered difficult to measure, but, as it is now well defined, financial measures of R&D have been established. Several previous studies demonstrated the commercial value of design, but failed to propose a reliable approach to capture design spending at the level of the firm. This paper presents a framework for classifying design activities and capturing design spending in firms. A number of exploratory case studies were conducted, four of which are described, to explore how companies understood design and how it could be measured. A conceptual model, by which the extent of design activity in firms may be better understood, is proposed. This model will be used as the basis of questions in a survey of design spending in UK firms

A Logistics Management Game for Actors of a Geographically Distributed Supply Chain

Management games are a common method for training employees in production and logistics, both in expert knowledge and in soft skills. Typically, all participants are located in one room while playing the game, which allows for a face-to-face interaction among the participants and between the participants and the trainer. This facilitates the typical learning loop of a management game: play, analyze and improve. For companies with supply chains covering faraway geographical locations and different time zones, the approach of having a management game seminar with all relevant participants (actors from different locations of the supply chain) in one room leads to high costs due to traveling and lost time for traveling. Multiplayer computer games played through the Internet could enable companies to conduct management games with actors of geographically distributed supply chains without spending money and time on travelling. The paper conceptually compares board games, multiplayer computer games played distributed over the internet and multiplayer VR games. Furthermore, the paper describes a prototype implementation of a computer game on supply chain management suitable for actors of a geographically distributed supply chain