DESIGN AS A FUNCTIONAL LEADER: A case study of Philips to investigate the potential of design as a leading functional discipline

This research investigates the role of design as a functional leader in multinational industries, to drive innovation successfully at a strategic level. It involved a detailed case study of the innovation process, and practices within Philips Design based in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, where design is a key decision making function within the company but not yet recognised as a leading discipline at strategic level. Philips Design wanted to use design research to build an integrated map of its actual practices and correlate these with other corporate innovation practices, to help establish strategic recognition for their value. The doctoral challenge was to explicate the process and determine whether the findings have generic capacity to support the role of design as a functional leading discipline. The investigation integrates an iterative loop of; abductive reasoning of design thinking and inductive reasoning of management thinking in an action research cycle. The case study was part of an empirical enquiry, where the researcher became a participatory observer at Philips Design, conducting one-on-one interviews for data collection and refining their analysis using a Delphi Technique. Three other multinational organisations were explored to take into account how each perceives the contribution of design and the different roles it plays in their organisation. Data triangulation was also used to validate findings with a third party expert. The research contributes to knowledge by confirming the conditions for design to act as a leading functional discipline. It shows that design cannot be the only functional lead for a multinational organisation. It identifies the major reason for this as the difference between thinkers trying to find viable options for the future and practitioners trying to defend the core business in their organisation, resulting in a gap between strategy and operation. The research further elaborates on the reasons for the gap to exist through qualitative conceptual relationships between designer behaviour and organisational culture in the different innovation cycles that exist in the organisation

Connecting for Impact - Multidisciplinary Approaches to Innovation in Small to Medium Sized enterprises (SMEs)

This paper reveals the methodology developed and adopted by groups of Multidisciplinary Design Innovation Masters students whilst working on projects with regional Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SME’s). It exposes an eight-stage approach and shows how the creation of a ‘problem-space tapestry’ acts as a mediator between different disciplinary approaches. The authors used a combination of observation, interview, post project-analysis and auto ethnographic reflection in order to uncover this process and to draw conclusions about the conditions that are necessary to support university based multidisciplinary design-led innovation projects of this type

Design as a functional leader: a case study to investigate the role of design as a potential leading discipline in multinational organisations

This research investigates the role of design as a ‘functional leader’1 in multinational organisations, to drive innovation successfully at a strategic level. It involved a detailed case study of the innovation process, and practices within Philips Design, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, where design is a key function within the company but not yet recognised as a leading strategic discipline. Philips Design wanted design research to build an integrated map of its actual practices and correlate these with other corporate innovation practices, to help establish strategic recognition for their value. The doctoral challenge was to explicate the process and determine whether the findings have generic capacity to support the role of design as a leading functional discipline. The investigation integrates an iterative loop of; abductive reasoning of design thinking and inductive reasoning of management thinking in an action research cycle. The case study was an empirical enquiry, where the researcher became a ‘participatory observer’ at Philips Design, conducting one-on-one interviews for data collection and refining their analysis using a Delphi Technique. The contribution to knowledge has been generated by combining these research methods to represent data in a logical manner using visual mapping techniques to produce an explicitly defined ‘design innovation process map’ for Philips Design. Comparison with three other multinational organisations explored how each perceives the contribution of design and the different roles it plays in their organisation. Triangulation with a third party expert was also used to validate the findings. The correlation of the research with literature in the field explored the relationship between human behaviour, organisational culture and business innovation cycles and took this an incremental step forward by visually illustrating the conceptual relationship between different theories. The focus became understanding the reasons for the differences between the thinkers and the practitioners in a design team. Significantly, this led to it validating the theory of ‘Design Driven Innovation’ by Roberto Verganti (2009). The study contributes value to his theory of innovation by highlighting four gaps in its application in multinational organisations and demonstrates that design can share the role of innovation leadership with other important functions only if it has an explicit process that aligns with organisational brand values and communicates the value generated by design effectively to the wider team. Therefore, whilst the research has not been able to confirm whether design can lead an effective innovation process at a strategic level, rather it needs to share this role in multinational organisations, it has identified the major reason for this as the differences between design team thinkers trying to find viable options for the future and practitioners trying to defend the core business in their organisation, resulting in a gap between strategy and operation. The research has confirmed the conditions for design to act as a leading functional discipline and provided design practitioners with tools that can help in strategic decision-making. It is hoped this research will inspire design researchers to carry out further study on the topic to improve and develop knowledge and competency to support the strategic role of design as a leading functional discipline in organisations. Also, that business, strategy and marketing researchers will be inspired to generate theories that could link the strategic role of the design innovation process to strategies in their own fields. Finally, the research identifies the need for quantitative research to explain the qualitative conceptual relationships it has depicted between designer behaviour and organisational culture in the different innovation cycles that exist in multinational organisations

Hidden value - towards an understanding of the full impact of engaging students in user-led research and innovation projects between universities and companies

‘Live’ projects have been the staple of degree programmes in design for as long as design education has existed. They represent the perfect vehicle through which students can test their evolving knowledge and skills. They provide an ideal constructivist platform through which problem-centred, authentic learning can be achieved and deliver immediate value to student learning. This study explores the value to the other stakeholders in such projects: the Company and the University. A suite of projects undertaken over a ten-year period between a leading Design School and one of the largest Fast Moving Consumer Goods companies in the world has been reviewed. Semi-structured interviews with Company employees and academics have been used to establish the impact of each project, and this data has been mapped against the original objective of each project in order to identify the hidden value of these collaborations. Through this exploration of a decade of University-Company collaborations, the authors identify levels of engagement that go beyond the ‘live project’. The paper illustrates the value of such projects for the ‘client’ organisation, and the academic community, as well as reflecting, briefly, on the student experience

The Value of Design in an Enterprise Cloud Solution

The purpose of this paper is to examine the value of design in a product development organization named C4C that targets large enterprises looking for a cloud based customer relationship management solution. There is a general sense that design is important at C4C, but no attempts have been undertaken to formalize and quantify that value in a cohesive manner. A Case Study approach has been used to collect evidence surrounding the design team’s contribution to the organization. Design management theory and tools have been applied to validate the findings and reach the conclusion. The findings of this paper clarify and shed light on the design team’s undeniable contribution to the success of the product and quantify the value of design. The paper concludes by interlinking four main findings; one, percent of top line revenue; two, balancing ‘the triad’; three, increasing the design influence; and, fourth, the cloud influence

Achieving excellence in design research: a case study of research and education framework at Northumbria University

This paper discusses the case study of the new research and education framework applied at the School of Design at Northumbria University that aims at building an integrated sustainable design research community. This community concerns itself with developing design value propositions (new methods, new knowledge and new design IDEAS or applications) by combining the three broad domains of the discipline (forms of practice); practice through collaboration (new methods), discovery through research (new knowledge), and new solutions through engagement (new products, and services). In both academic and commercial context, this also culminates into a purposeful learning for all stakeholders. The authors explain that the methodological gap between design ‘doers’ and design scholars in an academic context makes the process of design leadership very difficult. This paper discusses the paradox that design in the academia needs to respond to the conflict between learning through doing (design) and learning through research of design. Additionally, this paper highlights the challenges that the School of Design at Northumbria came across while establishing this research community and also discusses everyday challenges of maintaining this community

Towards a holistic framework of design competence

This article focuses on the development of a holistic competence framework that highlights the relationship between knowledge, attitude, skill and capability within the field of design management and design led innovation. Whilst individual expertise in the aforementioned attributes are important to individual performance, it is argued that becoming an expert in design ultimately originates from a combination of these attributes and the ability to apply them in any given context. The article derives a framework through a systematic review of the design competence literature, before applying this framework to a case study based on a postgraduate design project. The case study provides an insight into the competence held and developed by individuals at a postgraduate level multidisciplinary design-led innovation practice course, providing a foundation for future study in the area. The framework is capable of mapping the transition of competence from the novice designer to an expert who has mastered the ability to apply competence to any given context and as such offers a unique insight into design competence, given that current models primarily focus on education alone with little discussion of transition into design management, design-led innovation and its practice

Visualising design driven innovation

innovation in a multinational industry. It describes a study of the best design practices at a strategic level in Philips Design, Eindhoven as compared with industries very similar to or drastically different from Philips Design. The correlation of the research with literature in the field has led to it being based on the theory of innovation by Roberto Verganti (2009). The research explicitly defines the problems in practising ‘Design Driven Innovation system’ by making a detailed case study of the innovation process and practices within Philips Design based in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. The research uses case study method, which was part of an empirical enquiry, where the researcher became a ‘participatory observer’ in Philips Design, conducting one-on-one interviews and using Delphi Technique for data collection. The secondary source of data collection was archival records and physical artefacts, which formed the backbone for the case study. The research makes a tangible link between innovation theory as proposed by Roberto Verganti and practice through case study research done at Philips Design, Eindhoven and by comparing the findings with interviews with several other companies. The research highlights certain challenges in carrying out an effective innovation process to inform practitioners and comes up with recommendations to run an effective design driven innovation process, which is directly connected to the business

Understanding the dynamics of attitudes within a design and business focused collaboration

This paper aims to advance understanding about design’s unique contributions within collaborations between the disciplines of design and business. Collaboration between design and business functions is increasingly utilised as organisations seek to capitalise on a variety of knowledge and perspectives during the innovation process. Despite this increasing prevalence, the discipline of design can often be misunderstood by other disciplines within this particular interdisciplinary scenario due to the implicit knowledge that is central to the nature of design, which is often intangible and tacit in nature, yet provides designers with the capability to propose novel solutions to complex problem situations. This paper takes a deeper look at design attitude, which has previously been suggested to be one of the differentiators between design and other disciplines. The paper reflects on the results of a case study focusing on a collaboration between a multinational consumer goods company and a team of postgraduate students working out of a UK University. Data was obtained through observation, a reflective workshop and repertory grid based interviews. The originality of the paper lies in the way in which it categorises attitudes of different disciplines, in order to capture aspects of the design attitude that appear to be both unique and difficult for business focused people to adopt.Keywords: design attitude, multidisciplinary innovation, design knowledge