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This paper aims to conceptualise the interplay of strategic design and market-shaping capabilities.

Drawing on the emergent scholarly discourses related to strategic design and dynamic markets, this paper merges a contemporary view of markets and market-shaping capabilities with a conceptual exploration of strategic design.

This paper proposes that the strategic design process can shape markets through orchestrating and leveraging market-shaping capabilities. Specifically, it highlights how these capabilities trigger and facilitate purposeful intent; situated and systemic understanding; and collective collaboration.

Furthering the notion of strategic design, this paper contributes to clarifying how to interpret and use design as a strategic practice in business management.

This paper identifies strategic design as an innovative approach for creating future value-creating systems or markets, and as such, it develops a process framework for market-shaping capabilities, addressing the “how” of market shaping.

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether and how managing three aspects of design – the strategic role of design, outsourcing of design and organizational resistance to design – contribute to new product and service sales success.

The study was conducted through an online survey of US-based innovation managers. Measures were developed from past literature. In total, 324 managers with at least two years of innovation experience in diverse industries completed the survey. The collected data was checked for measurement reliability and then was used to test a model through regression analyses.

The model was significant, and each of the three aspects of design management was found to influence innovation sales in unique ways. The strategic role enhances sales, organizational resistance impedes sales and outsourcing strengthens then lowers sales. It makes no difference in results if the firms are manufacturers or service providers, indicating the model is robust across industries.

Strategic (design role), operational (design outsourcing) and cultural (design resistance) elements of design management matter to innovation. To better ensure strong new product and service sales, firms should elevate the role of design in innovation, apply a combined approach of externalizing and internalizing the design function and reduce organizational resistance to design.

This paper is one of the first to empirically examine the innovation impacts of design management, specifically determining the effects of design’s strategic importance, limits when outsourced and organization resistance on new product and service sales.

This article proposes a conceptual basis upon which to address strategic design as business intellectual capital.

A literature review was carried out on the subjects of strategic design and intellectual capital.

A conceptual basis is derived from the theoretical proposal that strategic design is an intangible, critical factor, which favors organizational competitiveness, when it impacts the betterment of organizational and intellectual capital processes.

On the level of business practice, this article submits a broadened view of design, which may be applied to organizational strategic processes and which transcends its emphasis in the production of goods or services.

In previous literature, strategic design has not been addressed as intellectual capital, which supports the resolution of strategic problems.

The present document presents the possible contributions of strategic design to organizational transformation, as a part of business intellectual capital.

A case study from a Colombian family business group, with three business units, industrial, commercial and service, were used. Interviews regarding critical events and semi-structured interviews were employed. Data were processed with NVivo software.

It was found that abductive, empathetic and creative competencies (human capital) that may facilitate the comprehension of nature, needs and alternatives to be employed in organizational change processes. Further, the importance of the participative design approach in co-creation, with interest groups, transformation projects (relational capital), and design thought, as a methodology for the implementation of the preceding (structural capital), was identified.

The results revealed, in this case, suggest several future investigative routes. Firstly, increased empirical research, based on this proposal, is suggested. Specifically, it would be relevant to perform causal studies that report the contribution of each of the components of strategic design to the diverse organizational transformation processes. A third line of investigation might include delving into certain relationships that have already been identified, but require further comparison. One of these might be the role of design thought as a method to perform specific organizational transformation projects.

As a result of the present investigation, a model is established (see Figure 2) which may be useful to companies to address organizational transformation, capitalizing on the benefits offered by strategic design. In summary, the proposal considers four phases (see the central circle in Figure 2). Phase 1: understanding organizational occurrences and situations, the basis upon which to determine the nature of an organizational transformation. This activity alludes to the work that is collaboratively managed with different interest groups, in the systematic comprehension of the business organizational transformation chain of events. Phase 2: determining the path to be followed or the route for collaborative action. Doing so in participative fashion permits the representation of a diversity of ideas and opinions on a given problem/potential identified in the preceding process. This stimulates and strengthens the creative competency in company personnel (Jeffries, 2007). If this competency is incorporated into the corporate culture, differential factors may be established, in an environment with broad competency, thus achieving transformations appropriate for a competitive environment.

Co-creation, the central axis of the organizational transformation process. At the base of all organizational transformation processes is an approach focused on human beings, whose principal questions include: What place do individuals have in strategic problem resolution, like those of organizational transformation, in companies? How are human competencies strengthened when applied to organizational transformation processes? What types of ties are made, beyond the establishment of natural relationships (work, purchase, sell), with interest groups? And most importantly: How do they achieve the construction of new business realities together? To do this, participative and co-creative methods must be employed as a scenario to jointly achieve multiple satisfaction realities, in which understanding the essence of the participative design approach becomes meaningful (Jones, 2015).

Design thought, as a methodological proposal for organizational transformation projects. The use of inspiration, ideation, and implementation stages, iteratively and permanently, is suggested. Continuous review of the point of departure, the path trodden and the goals to be achieved should be prioritized, such that they may act as compasses for organizational transformation, considering strategic design to be a key motor (Yee et al., 2017).

In this chapter, the author outlines the link between organization design and competitive strategy, focusing on rivalry. A firm’s organization design choices can affect its competitive advantage as well as the strategic decisions of its rivals. Therefore, organization design can influence the nature and intensity of competitive interactions between firms. To illustrate this effect, the author focuses on the literature on divisionalization and offers a set of propositions as examples. Taken together, the author makes three main observations: (1) a firm’s competitive position and objectives are reflected in its organizational choices; (2) heterogeneity in competitive position and objectives lead to heterogeneity in organization design choices across firms; and (3) organization design and competitive strategy are interdependent processes. The author concludes by discussing the implications for strategy and management research and pointing out some opportunities for future research.

Nowadays, the strategic role of design is reinforced by the increased attention that customers pay to the aesthetic, symbolic and emotional values of products. These values can be communicated through the appropriate combination of product signs (such as form, colours, materials and so on), which gives meaning to a product. Consequently, companies are investing substantial efforts in appropriate strategies for the development of product signs and languages. Firms must understand how knowledge about new products signs diffuses in industrial networks in order to be able to access and exploit it. The purpose of this paper is to ask, does the capability to propose new product trends allow companies to be recognized as innovators? Does the early adoption of product signs positively affect consumer preferences?

An empirical analysis is conducted on strategies regarding a specific type of product within the Italian furniture industry (namely, chairs). In particular, the paper explores the roles played by furniture companies in the diffusion processes of product signs. Analysing approximately 300 chairs marketed by 35 leading Italian furniture manufacturers between 1996 and 2005, the paper explores different strategies adopted in the diffusion processes of product signs.

The empirical results illustrate how trend‐setters are able to attain the best performance in terms of innovativeness and, in part, consumer preferences by forwarding new interpretations of existing material combinations starting at the early phases of diffusion.

The paper analyses the different roles played by companies in the diffusion processes of product signs and thus provides interesting insights regarding the exploitation of the industrial resources of companies.

The aim of this work is to provide an initial picture of how some design agencies are contributing toward a paradigm shift and how they are developing in the future to better inform design policies and interdisciplinary work. There is a general agreement that the current government and public sector structure and modes of operation need radical transformation. In this scenario, a shift from New Public Management towards New Public Governance paradigm has been auspicated. Design has attracted attention as a potential approach to support this transformation, but research into Service Design, as well as discussions on its future development, for public sector innovation is limited. This paper is an exploratory study into the individual work of seven representative UK design agencies operating for and within the public sector.

The paper reviews literature on public sector reform and innovation to inform comparative studies of contemporary design agencies working for public sector reform. Interviews with seven designers from NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, Participle, Innovation Unit, Uscreates, Collaborative Change, Futuregov and Snook are conducted to review their perceived role for public sector reform, their design approaches, exemplar projects and main challenges.

Emerging design strategies for Public Sector reform are: a collaborative design approach that considers all stakeholders as equal co-creators of public value; operating at different complementary levels to aim at systemic change; designing from the inside out (innovation culture) and outside in (market change). These different strategies imply the development of possible different business models. Existing creative tensions appear between embedding and outsourcing strategies, acting as facilitators vs designers, developing both designing and service delivery roles.

This paper is based on a limited sample of design agencies, and it is not a systematic study into the impact of their design work, which should be the object of a following study.

This paper brings Service Design practice into public sector innovation debate to inform future interdisciplinary research and innovation policies. It positions existing design innovation strategies within the wider picture of public sector reform to support a more informed design practice.

Few studies have looked at the UK design agencies for public sector innovation and discussed their possible future developments. This paper provides an original and holistic description of design for public sector innovation with considerations on how it should be interpreted when developing supporting innovation and design policies.

This study aims to suggest an integrative model to investigate design orientation by analyzing its links with market orientation and its ability to generate and maintain a competitive advantage and improve effectiveness.

The structural equation technique is used to test the research hypotheses based on data from the Spanish furniture and lighting industries. The data are obtained from the responses of 209 companies to a questionnaire targeted at design and marketing managers.

The results suggest that design orientation helps companies to gain competitive advantages in product differentiation and improve business effectiveness. The design orientation is stimulated by proactive market orientation and by marketing-design integration during the development of new products. The design orientation fully mediates the effect of proactive marketing orientation on perceived effectiveness.

This study uses a quantitative research approach to propose and test an integrative model that relates design orientation with the generation of competitive advantage in product differentiation and perceived effectiveness.

According to researchers and managers, there is a lack of agreement between marketing and manufacturing managers on critical strategic issues. However, most of the literature on the subject is anecdotal and little formal empirical research has been done. Three companies are investigated to study the extent of agreement/disagreement between manufacturing and marketing managers on strategy content and process. A novel method permits the study of agreement between the two different functional managers on the process of developing strategy. The findings consistently show that manufacturing managers operate under a wider range of strategic priorities than marketing managers, and that manufacturing managers participate less than marketing managers in the strategy development process. Further, both marketing and manufacturing managers show higher involvement in the strategy development process in the latter stages of the Hayes and Wheelwright four‐stage model of manufacturing’s strategic role.

This paper aims to investigate the intermediary role of universities in spreading design for sustainability into industry.

Three case studies were undertaken on Delft University of Technology, Design for Sustainability Program from The Netherlands; a center on sustainable consumption and production; and Prof. Göksel Demirer from Middle East Technical University, Environmental Engineering Department from Turkey.

The process and evolution of the intermediary roles of the cases are explained. Three types of structures, through which universities undertake intermediary role, are investigated via the cases studies, a program, a center and an individual scientist.

This study is a first attempt to investigate the intermediary role of universities in the design for sustainability field.