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This study aims to explore the enablers and barriers to design-driven innovation, defined as the innovation of product meanings, in the product-development process. Previous research provides some insights into what enables and hinders design-driven innovation; however a detailed understanding of these factors is missing.

A long-term case study was conducted at a furniture company between 2009 and 2016. Interviews were conducted with respondents within the company, as well as with partners such as retailers and designers.

This paper presents an overview of the identified enablers and barriers. The results demonstrate that enablers and barriers occur in all phases of the product-development process. Second, the connections between enablers and barriers are presented. These are found both within and across different phases, and extend beyond the company’s influence.

This study demonstrates how the innovation of product meanings is influenced throughout all phases of the product-development process. Therefore, there is a need to go beyond the mere identification of enablers and barriers. More is gained from generating a thorough understanding of the causes and connections of these factors, including the changes over time.

This study demonstrates the need for companies to be able to map what enables and hinders design-driven innovation in their product-development process, where a distinction needs to be made between internal and external factors, to enhance value creation.

This study presents a rare long-term case study on design-driven innovation. This study provides new knowledge on the enablers and barriers a company faces while adapting its product-development process to accommodate design-driven innovation.

The concept design-driven innovation focuses on innovating product meanings. It has been studied from a variety of perspectives and contexts since the early 2000s. However, a complete overview of the literature published in this area is currently missing. The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive understanding of how design-driven innovation contributes to value creation in product development.

In this systematic literature review, 57 papers and book chapters that cover design-driven innovation were identified and analyzed. An iterative coding process was followed to derive five facets of design-driven innovation that contribute to value creation.

Design-driven innovation creates value by focusing on the intangible values of products. The following five facets of design-driven innovation that contribute to value creation were identified: development of new product meanings, knowledge generation, actors and collaborations, capabilities and process. These facets and their interrelations are presented in a theoretical framework.

The main practical implication of this study is that it is now clear that the five facets of design-driven innovation are interrelated and reinforce each other. Therefore, companies need to approach design-driven innovation from a holistic perspective.

This paper contributes to theory by presenting the theoretical framework that provides an overview of available knowledge and that creates a context for future research.

This paper aims to investigate the phases of new product development within the design-driven innovation (DDI) process, the role of designers and collaborators in the process and how this process relates to some quality principles.

This study adopted a qualitative approach using Gioia methodology. In particular, four Italian manufacturing companies in the home appliances and furniture industry were selected, and data mainly collected through direct interviews were analysed through content analysis.

The new product development related to DDI includes the following phases: the company brief, the designer research, the concept of the designer, the design, legal protection, prototyping, production and the market launch. Designers play a strategic role in the above phases of DDI, but other actors also cooperate and some quality principles affect positively on the process. This study proposes a model for a DDI process in the home appliances and furniture sector.

Although this exploratory study was conducted on only four companies, it advances the DDI research in relation to new product development.

This study makes recommendations to entrepreneurs and managers on how to innovate successfully and to effectively manage designers and collaborators to ensure competition.

This analysis highlights that design-based innovation contributes to improving the quality of life of consumers.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first qualitative study to examine the phases of new product development in DDI process, the actors involved and relationship to quality principles for the Italian home appliances and furniture sector.

Maintaining and improving productivity of product design and engineering processes has been a paramount challenge for design-driven companies, which are characterised a high degree of development of products and processes in order to meet particular customer requirements. Literature on this issue is fragmented and dispersed and a concise and systematic overview is lacking. Hence, it remains unclear, which methods are applicable for design-driven companies to improve the productivity of limitedly available engineering resources (a challenge companies and nations face currently). The purpose of this paper is to develop such a systematic overview.

An unusual approach was utilised by combining the outcomes from a systematic literature review and the results of a Delphi study. From both research approaches complementary and overlapping methods for improving the productivity of product design and engineering processes could be drawn.

The unique systematic overview presents 27 methods to increase the productivity, effectiveness and efficiency of product design and engineering processes of design-driven companies. Moreover, the study finds that methods for improving effectiveness are preferred over methods for improving efficiency and that limitations with regard to the availability of resources are often not considered.

During the development of the systematic overview, a lack of empirical evidence to assess the actual impact of productivity improvement methods was discovered. This shortcoming demonstrates the need for more conceptual and empirical work in this domain. More studies are needed to test and confirm the usefulness of the proposed methods.

Nevertheless, design-driven companies, which struggle to increase the productivity of their product design and engineering processes, can systematically select improvement methods from the overview according to their impact on productivity, effectiveness and efficiency. However, companies should keep in mind, whether effectiveness of product design and engineering can really be increased without considering limitations in engineering resources.

Therefore, the systematic overview provides a valuable map of the unexplored territory of productivity improvement methods for product design and engineering for both practitioners and researchers. For the latter ones, it creates directions for empirical investigations in order to explore and to compare methods for the improvement of productivity of product design and engineering processes.

The on-going transition of societies and economies toward different organizational paradigms deeply informed by digital technologies is at the very center of current debates, involving scholars and impacting on a broad context of disciplines, ranging from humanities to science and technology. Therefore, the so-called “Fourth Industrial Revolution” has been described as a model where new modes of production and consumption will dramatically transform all major industrial systems; it has been targeted by many governmental plans as a goal for a sustainable future. While general frameworks describing 4.0 paradigm are codified and accessible, implementation strategies and their implications on specific local and sectorial systems are largely unexplored. Starting from this assumption, this paper aims to provide insights on the current state of the art and major trends of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”, possibly identifying its impacts on the textile and apparel industry.

From a methodological standpoint, the study approaches the topic from the perspective of fashion domain experts which can contribute, with a positioning essay, to better understanding Industry 4.0 (I4.0) implementation within their specific domain. This experts’ perspective is enriched by several descriptive case studies (Yin, 1984) offering examples and insights on possible implementation of I4.0 solutions in fashion industry, also showing the potential of a design driven perspective.

Starting from a synthesis of I4.0 framework and principles, the paper aims at showing their impacts on business units, processes and components within the specific context of the fashion industry. Through emerging evidences detected by experts’ domain perspective and exemplified by several descriptive cases, it offers a comprehensive overview of the potential implications of the Forth Industrial Revolution on this specific business. The picture drafted clearly shows how digital transformation, properly driven, could reshape the fashion industry into a more sustainable and truly customer-driven business. But, it also underlines criticalities and slowness of adoption by traditional established brands and companies. As a result, being focused on on-going phenomena, highly unexplored, it shows possible trajectories, enabling an effective transformation of textile and apparel industry embracing the I4.0 paradigm.

The paper has a broad perspective and could offer insights to different audiences, which could effectively contribute to a positive transition, to scholars and academics, who might want to better address the implementation of I4.0 model into real economic and social context, focusing on medium – long-term implications and showing innovation pathways which are still unexplored, second to practitioners, who are usually immersed into strict silos of competences and business functions and can start to build new bridges and interconnection within the system, taking advantages of I4.0 potential, finally to policy-makers who can better shape development frameworks targeted to specific industries whose features require peculiar approaches and actions.

Flexibility and efficiency are dual attributes of the organizational structure that are crucial for project-driven enterprises to achieve sustainable development in a dynamic environment. However, there is a lack of research on the patterns by which the dual attributes of a project-driven enterprise’s organizational structure affect business model innovation. Employing organizational theory, this study aims to assess the mediating mechanisms and dynamic capabilities through which the dual attributes of the organizational structure influence business model innovation in project-driven enterprises.

Data were collected from 242 employees from four project-driven companies across 26 cities (e.g. Beijing, Tianjin, Guangzhou and Shenzhen) in China. Structural equation modeling revealed the relationship between organizational structure’s dual attributes and business model innovation.

The findings show that the dual attributes (flexibility and efficiency) of the organizational structure have positive impacts on business model innovation. Moreover, dynamic capabilities mediate the relationship between the dual attributes and business model innovation in project-driven enterprises.

This study provides contributions to innovation research in the context of project-driven enterprises by revealing the influence of organizational structure on business model innovation through the firms’ dynamic capabilities. Such knowledge can enable managers of project-driven enterprises to develop effective interventions to promote business model innovation.

The products of some firms emerge neither from new technology developments nor from attempting to address articulated consumers’ needs, but from a company-internal design-driven approach. To explore this design-driven approach, we propose a construct, design orientation, as a firm’s ability to integrate functionality, aesthetics, and meaning in its new products. We hypothesize relationships between a firm’s design orientation, customer orientation, technological orientation, and willingness to cannibalize on its new product performance.

We use data from surveys of senior marketing executives entrusted with design in 252 US firms, we validate the construct of design orientation and establish its distinctiveness from related constructs of creativity, technological orientation, and customer orientation. Using a structural equation modeling approach, we test the hypotheses and find support for them.

Individually, design orientation, technological orientation, and customer orientation improve new product performance. In addition, customer orientation decreases the positive effect of design orientation while willingness to cannibalize increases the positive effect of design orientation on new product performance.

More than two-thirds of respondents (69%) perceive that their firm can improve its new product performance by increasing its design orientation, an overlooked organizational capability.

Although practitioners have acknowledged the importance of design as a strategic marketing issue, there is little in the literature on how firms can benefit from building capabilities in the design domain, the issue we focus on in this research.

CEOs and other strategists don't have to be frustrated in their efforts to renew their companies through strategic change. But they do need to pay as close attention to strategy implementation as they do to strategy formation.

There has been a profound neglect in most of the literature dealing with social entrepreneurship on the relationship between social entrepreneurship and technological innovation. The purpose of this paper is to provide new insights into that relationship by using the case of Prezi, a Budapest, Hungary-based mission-driven software company.

The research approach used for this paper is qualitative in nature and uses the case study methodology. Evidence was based on interpretative/qualitative interviews and direct observations.

Using the example of Prezi, the authors show that social entrepreneurial activities and projects could act as an important innovation source for technology-based industries.

The authors use the case of Prezi and describe several of Prezi’s socially driven projects and show how they influence those involved with the company to continuously innovate and solve problems that have positive impact in the community as well as their core product offering.

Organizations facing issues related to growth, innovation, and strategy are embracing design thinking, a problem-solving process. This study explores 40 design thinking initiatives and identifies operational practices emerge and empirical categories across various contexts. Quantitative analyses of the initiatives and qualitative interview data are used to distinguish four configurations of action analogous to races: training, emphasizing learning-by-doing; marathons, capturing personal reflection over a long project; relays, highlighting team collaboration; and sprints, reflecting fast-paced product innovation. The initiatives are differentiated as designer-led versus team-driven and, low-urgency versus high-urgency. Implications of practicing design thinking in Organization Development and Change are discussed.