MIT Sloan Management Review

Management of Technology and Innovation, Marketing

 

The Evolution of the Design-Inspired Enterprise

By Gabriella Lojacono and Gianfranco Zaccai

April 15, 2004

A focus on design —which translates to a focus on customers’ true needs and unarticulated aspirations — ultimately creates better-informed, more nimble companies.

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In the literature on design, product development and innovation, the word “design” refers to many things: a creative art, a phase of product development, a set of functional characteristics, an aesthetic quality, a profession and more.1 In the lexicon of more and more companies, however, the word has come to denote the totality of activities and competencies that gather all relevant information and transform it into a new product or service. Design is understood as a core activity conferring competitive advantage by bringing to light the emotional meaning products and services have, or could have, for consumers and by extracting the high value of such emotional connections. This evolution is creating the design-focused enterprise, an organization that uses consumer-centered product development to move quickly and effectively from intimate customer knowledge to successful product and service offerings.

While this development has been written about from a theoretical viewpoint,2 there has been little practical discussion. Much has been written about design’s ability to increase productivity, product performance3 and the value of the emotional connection with customers,4 but little about design’s contribution to an overall better understanding of the consumer. There has been discussion of the role of consumer knowledge in driving innovation but not of the practical techniques for letting consumers’ unspoken, often unconscious, needs... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.

 
 

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