9

+ Brand meaning, organizational change

and innovationFERNANDO PINTO SANTOS

21

+ Designing for usability of complex

medical devices ANDREAS BENKER

33

+ Design methods and collaborative exploration

ANDREW WHITCOMB

45

+ Doing good while making profit

LIEN DE CUYPER

37

+ Strategizing in/for/by design: A pragmatic viewULISES NAVARRO AGUIAR

49

+ Exploring design as artistic practice using movement

ARIANA AMACKER

41

+ Intersections in radical innovationMARTA MORILLO

53

+ Understanding the role of users in innovation process

SARA JANE GONZALEZ

25

+ Impacting business through designMARZIA ARICÒ

29

+ Collaborating through design to frame cities'

complex problems VERONICA BLUGUERMANN

13

+ Authentic adaptation as a way out?

EVA KIRCHBERGER

17

+ Innovation as a re-interpretation process

NAIARA ALTUNA

+INTRODESMA is an Initial Training Network in the area of Design Management funded by the European Commission’s Marie Curie Actions (FP7) that combines 12 international Early Stage Researchers (ESRs), 4 leading universities within the area of design management, 4 European design consultancies and 4 complementary product and service organizations. This trans-disciplinary network is making an effort to engage academia and practice to understand and rethink how design and management can drive innovation, social progress and competitiveness. This requires a new perspective on design management that takes the best of both disciplines, design and management, into account to create something new and meaningful. The ambition of DESMA is to build a vibrant and sustainable platform of high quality research in the intersection of design and management respectively academia and practice and to find new ways to communicate, apply and validate the impact of research.

This document has been prepared for the mid-term review and annual meeting to be held in Helsinki 2-3 December 2013 to provide an overview of the work conducted by the ESR in the past year. The bulk of the report provides brief summaries of the profiles and research proposals developed by the ESR. The first few pages summarize the conversations held throughout the year, during meetings and events as well as online, on the identity and vision for DESMA. The ESR decided to work on a DESMA Manifesto for articulating the values and ideas that drive their efforts and should provide the foundation for the European Design Management Forum that we are aiming to develop through this project. This report, along with the new website www.desmanetwork.eu, is also the first expression of the visual identity of DESMA, ref lecting these values. At the annual meeting we look forward to all partners’ reactions and interpretations of the DESMA identity and working on how we can collaboratively take them further into something concrete in the next couple of years.

For further information on DESMA please contact:

ANNA RYLANDERProject coordinator

anna@desmanetwork.eu

ORIANA HASELWANTERCommunication strategist

oriana@desmanetwork.eu

+COMMUNICATION STRATEGY

YEAR 1

YEAR 2

YEAR 3

YEAR 4

Recruitment and initial research training

Development of communication strategy

Visual identity

DESMA branding

Facilitation of internal and partly external communication

Planned collaboration with DMI conference

Building DESMA network through different network activities

Future DESMA strategy

Growing DESMA network and external communication

DESMA publication

Final event and research dissemination

+MANIFESTODESIGN + MANAGEMENT RESEARCH ON THE VERGE OF FINDING NEW GROUNDS IN ORDER TO BECOME INDISPENSIBLE.

It is time to create alternatives to the existing – design management research, dissemination practices, institutional boundaries and standards of scientific validity.

Emerging out of the collision of design research and management research, DESMA was formed. DESMA (DESign + MAnagement) is a mutant. It is neither design nor management. It is not a bridge but something else. DESMA provides a home for research that does not fit the current models of assessment and dissemination found in traditional fields. Acknowledging the existing theoretical traditions, DESMA creates something new to practically contribute to innovation. DESMA is changing and challenging the system of research in the interception of academia and practice / management and design.

DESMA is an activist, utilizing the current systems within academia and industry but stepping out of them to find new ways of dissemination, communication, application, implementation and validation of research.

DESMA is the «+» in design + management because we are rethinking what design management means. Hence, DESMA moves

beyond traditions of applying design to management, or management to design to find new spaces (or times) where design and management overlap and pollinate each other. We are making a reality where practitioners and researchers actively develop new knowledge together. This leads to something more interesting, meaningful and with greater impact.

DESMA is an alternative to the existing. It is about finding and defining different ways of creating and applying knowledge.

WE ARE … designers and managers.

WE BELIEVE THAT …design can be more than a cool chair or a fancy car.management is not that grey and boring looking guy.design and management can enrich each other.

WE WANT TO …find alternatives to talk about design and management research.see things in a different light.use diverse skills and knowledge to make new ground for an emerging practise.apply practical knowledge to research and research to the real world.promote the field of design and management research and show that research can be valuable, justifiable and applicable.conform to the current system but challenge it at the same time.generate relevant knowledge.engage academia and practice to rethink how design and management can drive innovation, social progress, and competitiveness.invite others.

WE DO NOT WANT TO …bridge the exciting fields of design research and management research.use traditional ways to communicate research results.generate knowledge for the sake of knowledge.be stuck in a system.be lonely.

6+DYNAMIC IDENTIY

FONTThe DESMA font is elegant but modern, serious and qualitative, strong but at the same time unpretentious and very legible in different sizes and applications. It is the recurring element of the logo and not supposed to change.

The font is also used for headlines in publications and other media to create a common identity. For the copy text, Times New Roman is used, since this is a very basic font pre-installed on almost any device and therefore perfect regarding the growing DESMA network.

Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz +#-., )( / & % $§ "! ?` :; _* '

7

GRAPHIC ELEMENTThe + is the basic element for the dynamic, f lexible, developing, playful, experimental part of the logo representing the growing of the knowledge and the network. This element is the base for graphical explorations, pattern creation, visual representations and application on different material / media. It can and will alter over time to visualise the development of DESMA.

The + represents what DESMA stands for (design + management, academia + practice = something new rather than something in between).

Through unusual colour / from / technique combinations, we achieve boldness / uniqueness / differentness which we want to express with the logo.

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Fernando Pinto Santos is a PhD candidate at Aalto University School of Business, in the International Design Business Management (IDBM) Program. In terms of professional experience, Fernando worked in different international settings, namely in Africa and Asia, where he lived for several years as the executive manager of a company in Hong Kong.

He has also been an entrepreneur, launching and managing its own businesses, and developing consultancy work in brand management. His academic background is in Marketing Management and Design, and he holds a Master in each one of these disciplines. The current doctoral research revolves around brand and design management, organizational change and innovation.

fernando@desmanetwork.eu

F E R N A N D O P I N T O S A N T O S

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The traditional view of brands as a tool to promote the companies’ products disregards their full potential in contemporary business settings. However, brands are becoming increasingly more relevant to companies, and can even be regarded as a powerful mean to inf luence and direct the internal members and their practices.

My research is focused on how managers can purposively use brands to sustain internal changes in their companies. Also, I intend to study how brands can become drivers to develop innovative proposals to the markets. Previous research has shown that brands can indeed be used with these two goals but still little is known about this matter. I plan to analyse real brand management cases and then translate my findings into theoretical frameworks, taking into account existing theories and other research results. The purpose of my work is to augment the existing knowledge and develop insights that can be relevant for managerial practices.

+BRAND MEANING, ORGANIZA- TIONAL CHANGE AND INNOVATION

10

BACKGROUND AND THEORETICAL POSITIONINGIt has been questioned if brands should continue to be regarded narrowly as marketing tools for the promotion of products and services (Allen et al. 2008). Brands can be regarded with a more encompassing view, assuming a strategic role for companies (Berthon, Holbrook, Hulbert & Pitt, 2007; Diamond, Sherry, Muñiz, McGrath, Kozinets & Borghini, 2009; Urde, Baumgarth & Merrilees, 2011). In particular, there is growing interest on the impact of branding in the internal dimension of companies (Kornberger, 2010). Brands and branding activities might be envisaged as a way of expressing preferred meanings that may inf luence and direct organizational members and practices (Kärreman & Rylander, 2008). This perspective resonates with the sense-making theory in organization studies where meaning can emerge within a future-oriented frame that incorporates past and present orientations (Gephart, Topal & Zhang, 2012). This line of inquiry has explored circumstances under which individuals cope with ambiguous situations that require them to develop new understandings and engage in forward-looking thinking (Stigliani & Ravasi, 2012). Transposing these ideas to branding in an organizational setting, I intend to explore if brands and their meanings can sustain sense-making processes that articulate the company strategy towards a preferred future.

There is an emergent paradigm on branding research that sets meaning creation at the core of brand management practices. This new paradigm is often associated with interpretativist research and features the assumption that meaning is not unilaterally created but is rather a construction with multiple authors (Allen, Fournier & Miller, 2008). One of the current research challenges is to understand more deeply the dynamic nature of brand meaning (Allen et al. 2008). Also, materiality and the relation between physical objects and meaning creation inside organizations is a relevant path of inquiry that remains under researched (Carlile, Nicolini, Langley & Tsoukas, 2013). As Diamond et al. (2009, p. 119) argue «theories of brands and branding have only begun to scratch the surface of person-object interactions». I intend to explore the relation between meaning creation and materiality, and I will address the concept of meaning as a complex dynamic construction.

My interest on how brands can inf luence the internal dimension of organizations is largely inspired in the ref lection I have developed after concluding my master thesis. Since then I have been wondering about how brands can become inf luential for organizations internal practices. In the last months I have been delving into the existing literature and analysing different areas of inquiry and concepts that I believe connect with my research interests. These include sense-making theory, materiality in organization studies, process thinking, strategy-as-practice, strategic ambiguity and boundary objects. My research is positioned in the organizational and management fields of study. Hatch and Schultz (1997) have argued that contemporary organizations need to combine knowledge from the disciplines of marketing and organization studies to address the breakdown of boundaries between their internal and external aspects. Social constructionism is the underlying paradigm of my research project.

RESEARCH QUESTIONSMy research is focused on brands of products or services – not on corporate brands, except if they overlap. The purpose of my PhD research is to explore the strategic role of brands within an organizational setting. This general purpose is unfolded in two research questions:(1) How can brands sustain organizational change?(2) How can brands drive innovation?

My research is exploratory and my intention is to unveil brand management practices in real settings, expanding the current understanding on the emergent role of brands and brand management in contemporary organizations.

RESEARCH METHOD AND NEXT STEPSI will develop a case study oriented process of research. The unit of analysis are commercial organizations that manage their own brands. I plan to choose case studies that I consider as revelatory (Yin, 2009) according to my research purposes. The revelatory nature of the cases and their potential to offer interesting empirical material will justify the choices (Yin, 2009). A key aspect of the case selection is obtaining access to collect the empirical material.

The option for multiple case studies follows the logic of replication, not of statistical relevance. Yin (2009) defines this process as theoretical sampling. In this sense, I plan to start with one or two case studies and then choose more cases to add to the data collection process. The choice will be made with the purpose of replicating or extending the emergent theory.

11

The process will be continuous and multiple cases will be addressed at the same time.

The data collection will be made with a qualitative approach and the process of research will be highly iterative between the data collected and the existing theory (Eisenhardt, 1989; Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007; Alvesson & Sköldberg 2009). In overall terms, abduction inspires the methodological process I will use (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009). The method has some characteristics of both induction and deduction but is more than a simple mix of the two. The empirical area is developed during the data collection and the overarching theories are also refined in a continuous recursive way (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009). The analysis of theory will not only precede but will also be embedded in the data collection process. Thus, the research process will alternate between theory and empirical data, whereby both are continuously reinterpreted in the light of each other (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009). I expect that the main sources of the empirical material will be interviews, observations and analysis of documents (Yin, 2009).

At this moment I aim starting collecting empirical material in organizations in Finland but I am also considering collecting data in other countries. I am already collecting data in one company and developing contacts in order to be able to extend my research to other settings.

KEY REFERENCESAllen, C. T., Fournier, S., & Miller, F. (2008). Brands and their meaning makers. In C. Haugtvedt, P. Herr, and F. Kardes (Eds.), Handbook of Consumer Psychology (pp. 781-822). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Alvesson, M., & Kärreman, D. (2007). Constructing mystery: Empirical matters in theory development. Academy of Management Review 32(4), 1265-1281.Alvesson, M., & Sköldberg, K. (2009). Ref lexive methodology: New vistas for qualitative research. London: Sage.Berthon, P., Holbrook, M. B., Hulbert, J. M., & Pitt, L. (2007). Viewing brands in multiple dimensions. MIT Sloan Management Review, 48(2), 37-43.Carlile, P. R., Nicolini, D., Langley A. & Tsoukas, H. (Eds.). (2013). How Matter Matters: Objects, Artifacts, and Materiality in Organization Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Diamond, N., Sherry Jr, J. F., Muñiz Jr, A. M., McGrath, M. A., Kozinets, R. V., & Borghini, S. (2009). American girl and the brand gestalt: closing the loop on sociocultural branding research. Journal of Marketing, 73(3), 118-134.Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). Building theories from case study research. Academy of Management Review, 14, 532-550.Eisenhardt, K. M. & Graebner, Melissa E. (2007). Theory Building from cases: opportunities and challenges. Academy of Management Journal, 50, 25-32.Gephart, R. P., Topal, C., & Zhang, Z. (2012). Future-oriented Sensemaking: Temporalities and Institutional Legitimation. In T. Hernes & S. Maitlis (Eds.), Process, sensemaking & organizing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Hatch, M. J. & Schultz, M. (1997). Relations between organizational culture, identity and image. European Journal of Marketing, 31(5), 356-365.Kärreman, D. & Rylander, A. (2008). Managing Meaning through Branding − the Case of a Consulting Firm. Organization Studies, 29, 103-125.Kornberger, M. (2010). Brand society: how brands transform management and lifestyle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Stigliani, I. & Ravasi, D. (2012). Organizing thoughts and connecting brains: material practices and the transition from individual to group-level prospective sensemaking. Academy of Management Journal, 55(5), 1232-1259.Urde, M., Baumgarth, C., & Merrilees, B. (2011). Brand orientation and market orientation – From alternatives to synergy. Journal of Business Research, 66, 13-20.Yin, R. K. (2009). Case study research: Design and methods (4th ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

12

Eva Kirchberger holds a BA (hons) in Business Administration and graduated from Central Saint Martins with a MA in Innovation Management in 2012. Currently, she pursues a PhD

at Imperial College, looking into symbolic and social behaviour of organizations at market level. Within this topic, she pays particular attention to meaning construction processes, by

using participatory observation complemented by using text-mining techniques to extract and analyse patterns of association among actors. As an ESR based at Engine Service Design

Consultancy, Eva is engaged with strategic questions concerning design consultancies, particularly in the young field of service design.

E V A K I R C H B E R G E R

eva@desmanetwork.eu

13

Service design as a new market category has emerged quite rapidly since the first pioneers, live|work (2001) and Engine (2002) started offering service design commercially and claimed the label. Since then, a service design field has developed, which features institutions such as the Service Design Network, Service Design Master Courses at universities ( f.e. Royal College of Art), and academic conferences. Recently, the success of service design attracts management consultancies, which start including service design as part of their core offering. This represents a challenge for the pioneers, as modifications of the practice by those entrants might lead to ambiguous meanings and be consequential for a devaluation of the service design category by interested audiences. As a consequence, the meaning of the entire category suffers and is at risk to turn into a fad. In order to prevent this from happening, pioneers have several strategic options at their disposal. In the following, I propose a research design which suggests the «theory of authentic adaptation»: as reaction to new entrants conquering the field, pioneers might react in

+AUTHENTIC ADAPTATION AS A WAY OUT?

drawing from their heritage, while also adapting some features from the new context.

BACKGROUND AND THEORETICAL POSITIONING Although a lot of the research on niches and fields links categories to isomorphic pressures and cultural persistence, categories emerge around practices, firms and markets that are both short and long lived, such as fads for example. In studies that explore the conformity pressures exerted by categories, an implicit assumption is that categories are generally durable (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). The literature on management fads and fashions however, ref lects on situations where new kinds of management practices spread widely, but also fall out of favour quickly (Abrahamson & Fairchild, 1999). Even when new organizational forms and related markets emerge around diffusing practices, the labels used to categorise a related practice, form and market may still be short-lived, at least in terms of popularity and the isomorphic pressures associated with categories.

Consider for example service design as a category of professional services. It emerged in 2001, with the founding of live|work, the first service design consultancy, which started to design service experiences. Inspired by the shift in the market from products to digital services, and marketing scholars’ discourse about services in the mid 1990s, these pioneers blended their professional product and digital design techniques with tools borrowed from marketing. With the entrance of the second pioneer Engine promoting the service design language and facilitating networks, the foundation was laid that service design became synonymous for a practice, an organizational form and a market during within the last decade. The success of category pioneers invited imitation and entry into this new market from new competitors, some of which include larger firms with an alternative approach in service design. Gradually, this has had an effect on redefining and tweaking how people understand service design as a category. In particular, large consulting firms that establish service design practices stress the benefits of their strengths

14

in more conventional services, such as strategy consulting and operations. In response, one of the category pioneers live|work has recently begun to position itself as engaging in business design, rather than service design. Thus, the success of the category pioneers has encouraged entry into this newly created market, which paradoxically puts it at risk of becoming a fad.

Existing literature discusses how adopters shift the meaning of an innovation at the time that it is spreading (Rogers, 1995), but it does not mention the fact that the original intended value of the innovation as created by the pioneers is still valuable. However, the situation the category pioneers are facing is ambiguous. Assuming that their creation is still valuable, can they defend their category and do something against the change? Can a middle ground be established to ref lect their identity and not shift the focus away from their strengths? Moreover, when is it important for adaption to be implemented over reinterpretation?

Thanks to the relational perspective in social analysis, we can understand that core attributes of a category shift by time, and we are able to say

when and how they do so. While formerly having been restricted to the interpretations based on de novo or del lio firms, we can go beyond this and trace quantitative and qualitative shifts within the category. As a practice becomes reinvented by entrants, it leads to a constant change in meaning. Based on the degree and quantity of attributes having shifted, we can identify how much firms within a market would need to change in order to match the new relevant attributes featured. This informs the strategy of how to respond to these shifts – either by adopting some of those elements or – in case modification is not enough – by reasserting the importance of service design techniques. The latter might require qualitative research methods to inquire managers of potential client organizations what would be appealing to them in order to push back to service design.

In order to evaluate the actual full range of strategic opportunities category pioneers have at their disposal, it is informative to see how firms have reacted in such situations in the past. Based on observations, I hypothesise that pioneers have several choices: from 1) not adapting at all and staying true to

their originally created prototype, 2) modifying their practices, 3) moving on to the next practice and call their category «a fad», or 4) reinterpreting the category by adopting some elements and assert others up, to 5) pretending to adhere to the new category, but decoupling their day-today activities (Meyer & Rowan, 1977).

Those «conformity effects» exerted by a collectivity of firms identifying themselves with the same label are at least partly related to the cognitive limitations by individuals. They ref lect our individual capacity for sense-making, which also informs collective sense-making at the population level. An individual makes sense of a situation by giving meaning to an experience. The mechanism behind this includes extracting cues and linking them to well-learned cognitive structures (Weick, 1995). In imperfectly competitive markets, members of this market classify themselves in subgroups, identified by core attributes serving as cues for the shared sense-making of categories (Porac & Thomas, 1995). These entrepreneurs engage in sense-giving. On the contrary, audiences engage in sense-making: the more a firm resembles the cognitive typical prototype of the category, the more it is perceived by audiences as key member (Porac et al., 1995) and legitimate (Zuckermann, 1999; Hsu, 2006). DiMaggio & Powell (1983) argue that isomorphism serves to ensure stability and durability.

In contrast, management fashions literature claims that practices and hence categories can follow a short-lived lifecycle (Abrahamson & Fairchild, 1999). Apart from the literature on innovation diffusion giving us indices of how the adoption of administrative innovation

15

results in variation of practices consequential for the shift in meaning (Rogers, 1995), we do not know the equivocal consequences for entrants in a category mimicing innovation. Current literature simply does not address the consequences for meaning attribution due to entrants changing the structure of the category. In other words, the competitive dynamics literature does not mention the sense-giving and sense-making processes exerted by entrepreneurs and is not focused on audiences in competitive dynamics. Hence, the following question arises:

RESEARCH QUESTION How do category pioneers respond to imitation and entry that potentially redefines the category?

My research will contribute to the existing literature the theory of «authentic adaptation». I will basically show how pioneers navigate between two dynamics and how this can be implemented. On one hand, these entrepreneurs have to reassert what they are good at and be «authentic» towards their heritage; failure to do so will resulted in their efforts being perceived as a fad. On the other hand, they have to «adapt», otherwise they will fall behind their category and will be out of business. I will, therefore, investigate the factors, which determine when reinvention, rather than adaptation, is important. This will serve as the basis of a novel framework.

RESEARCH METHOD AND NEXT STEPSAs part of the Marie Curie FP 7 program, I am affiliated with Engine as my assigned research partner. Hereby I enjoy the privilege, to have been visiting the office once a week and participated at important events. This allows me for being seen as part of the team, but also maintain an objective glance from the outside. Further, having held good relations with the senior team, I have easy and f lexible access to data and projects. In overall, I will use a mixed-methods approach of qualitative and quantitative methods and triangulate between different data sources (Creswell, 2003). Hereby, I will primarily draw on quantitative methods, such as relational content analysis of publications in Faktiva, which are complemented by participatory research and semi-structured interviews within Engine and key stakeholders in the service design field. An important advantage of this mixed-method approach is that

it reduces method bias by looking at the issue from different angles, hence allows for cross-validation (Creswell, 2003).

KEY REFERENCESAbrahamson, Eric and Gregory Fairchild. (1999). «Management fashion: Lifecycles, triggers, and collective learning processes.» Administrative Science Quarterly 44:708-740.Creswell, John W., Vicki L. Plano Clark, Michelle L. Gutmann, and William E. Hanson. (2003). «Advanced mixed methods research designs.» Handbook of mixed methods in social and behavioral research. 209-240.DiMaggio, Paul and Walter W. Powell. (1983). «The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields.» American Sociological Review 48:147-160.Hsu, Greta. (2006). «Jacks of All Trades and Masters of None: Audiences' Reactions to Spanning Genres in Feature Film Production.» Administrative Science Quarterly 51:420-450.Meyer, John W. and Brian Rowan. (1977). «Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony.» American Sociological Review 83:340-363Porac, Joseph F., Howard Thomas, Fiona Wilson, Douglas Paton, and Alaina Kanfer. (1995). «Rivalry and the industry model of Scottish knitwear producers.» Administrative Science Quarterly 40:203-227. Rogers, E. M. (1995). Diffusion of innovations. New York, The Free Press. Ch. 5-6.

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An Industrial Engineer with a major in Innovation and Design Management and a master thesis in the two areas, Naiara is passionate about: Design and Management. She has always enjoyed pursuing and attaining lofty goals, being the fact of finding an opportunity to do her master thesis at Politecnico di Milano (in the interaction among Design and Management). This is when she uncovered the path she wanted to follow after graduating, as her master thesis in Milan led to her actual position as an Early Stage Researcher (ESR) at DESMA’s Training Network, based at Politecnico. In her everyday work she deals with how should meaning driven innovation be managed in order to help companies make new proposals that people will love!

The abroad study experiences she had in Copenhagen, London and Milan have enriched her university career professionally and, above all, personally. Having travelled through new cultures, experiencing and adapting to local customs, reveal an open minded and curious personality capable to adapt to new situations and able to overcome difficulties regardless the problem’s origin and nature.

N A I A R A A L T U N Anaiara@desmanetwork.eu

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A new stream of literature on innovation management is growing – the one driven by meaning. Meaning relates to «product meaning», namely the purpose of a product or service as perceived by the user (Verganti, 2009). Meaning driven innovations are not simple sparks of creativity, but rather the result of a process where firms envision how people could experience and give meaning to things (Verganti, 2009). Whereas Innovation of Meaning has recently been cited by the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) as one the most relevant topics to be investigated, research on the topic is still on its early stages. Some recent works have explored the nature of meanings and how these could evolve over time (Öberg 2012, Verganti and Öberg, 2013).

The basic principle underneath this process is the «need to leverage the work of interpreters to envision how people could give meaning to things» (Verganti, 2009), where interpreters are people that look at

+INNOVATION AS A RE- INTERPRETATION PROCESS

the same experience the company is trying to innovate but from a different perspectives.

This research aims to better understand the dynamics to be carried with the interpreters in order to come up with an innovative proposal that people with welcome. More precisely it focuses on who are the people that best work to act as interpreters as well as how should they be managed to get the best out of them in the reinterpretation process. For the exploration it will leverage on sense making theory (Weick, 1995) to explore this path towards innovation as a re-interpretation process.

The study is based on three longitudinal case studies in which companies have attempted to dialogue with interpreters to come up with a new meaning that would latter be proposed to customers. For the understanding of this dynamics (that see innovation as a re-interpretation process) the research leverages on organizational theories of sense making.

BACKGROUND AND THEORETICAL POSITIONINGArea of Investigation A new stream of literature on innovation management is growing – the one driven by meaning. To clarify, when we mention «product meaning» we relate to the purpose of a product or service as perceived by the user (Verganti, 2009). It is about the purpose for why a product is used, not how it is used (the user interface), nor what the product consists of (its features).

Whereas Innovation of Meaning (regarded as product’s meaning to the developer and the customer) is cited by the PDMA among the top research priorities for new product development, investigation on innovation of meaning is still at its infancy. Some recent works explore its nature and the dynamics of how new meanings can evolve leveraging on theories from the philosophical field of hermeneutics (Öberg, 2012; Verganti and Öberg, 2013). Moreover, the process of meaning making has been described in the cross section

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of design and innovation when trying to understand the contribution of design practice to the latest (Jahnke, 2013). Here, the study consists of non-designerly firms where a designer brings a new critical angle to the innovation process. Nonetheless, as this research is aiming at studying, this critical ability is not exclusively a designerly skill, but also an activity that could be performed by others, like the «interlocutors» (Lester et al, 1998) or, «interpreters»: experts external to a company – but in relation to the subject per se.

Thus, meaning driven innovations are not simple sparks of creativity, but rather the result of a process led by the entrepreneurs and managers involved in the process of innovation. The basic principle underneath this process is the «need to leverage the work of interpreters to envision how people could give meaning to things» (Verganti, 2009), where interpreters are people that look at the same experience the company is trying to innovate but from a different perspectives.

It is precisely in this interaction with interpreters that the re-interpretation process happens. Interacting with them (i.e. external parties) implies tapping into external research, external perspectives, meaning the company steps back from users and their products to take a broader perspective. This research focuses on understanding how this re-interpretation process happens, with special focus on who are the people that best work to act as interpreters as well as how should they be managed to get the best out of them in the reinterpretation process.

International State-of-the-art Meaning is a wide concept that has been discussed in many fields such as

philosophy or ideology an may have several connotations and understandings. In this research, meaning is linked to innovation of meaning and connects «to a product, user and the context, to interpret it (product/service) in the way that the purpose changes» (Öberg, 2012). The focus is on the «why» rather than on the «what» or «how» of the product or service we are referring to. Thus, in innovation of meaning the purpose of a product or service is the one perceived by a human. Nonetheless, an individual alone cannot construct a meaning, and it is rather a combination of a personal interpretation but also socially constructed over time, not constant (Berger and Luckmann, 1967).Historically innovation has been understood as a process of problem solving, where innovation is the result of a cognitive work that combines individual knowledge, skills, behaviours and processes in the search of an optimal solution to a given problem (Simon 1982, Clark 1985). However, if we want to understand innovation of meaning, this approach does not seem to work properly and a few works have proposed a new lens to look at innovation of meaning routed on hermeneutics (Öberg and Verganti 2013, Öberg, 2012), where there is no optimal meaning, but different interpretations of what a product could mean. In these studies innovation of meaning is presented as a process of interpreting and envisioning.

This is not the first time in which innovation has been investigated as a process of interpreting and envisioning. A widely known stream of research in organizational studies has focused on how the employees, the leaders and the organization itself can create meaning. This studies include sense making (Weick, 1995) and sense giving (Gioia and Chittipeddi 1991) where meaning is the result of a process in which individuals and groups attempt to interpret novel and ambiguous situations by confronting events or tasks occurred in the past (Weick, 1995). Another relevant line of inquiry has taken this path further by exploring prospective models of sense making in which individuals and groups cope with ambiguous situations that require them to develop novel understanding and engage in forward-looking thinking to «structure the future by imagining some desirable state» (Gioia and Mehra, 1996). These studies do not seem to directly address products or services but rather more organizational aspects. However, and considering sense making (in its broad sense) is the process by which people give meaning to experience, these theories seem to resonate with the research questions presented below.

RESEARCH QUESTIONHansen and Birkinshaw (2007) argued that innovation needs to be viewed as an integrated f low where ideas are generated, converted into products or practices and latter diffused into the market. In their opinion, viewing innovation as an end-to-end process rather than focusing on a specific part allows companies to spot the weakest and the strongest links, but still, when dealing with research on an emerging stream of managing innovation (as it is the case of innovation driven by meaning) it seems quite reasonable to first individually analyse of each of the phases to later integrate the learning.

As previously mention the primary objective of the research is to understanding who are the people that best work to act as interpreters as well as how should they be managed to get the best out of them in the reinterpretation process. This means we are dealing with the idea generation

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phase where executives are aware of the need of good ideas but struggle to answer where they come from. If we refer to meaning driven innovation an extensive study of companies in northern Italy innovation scholar Roberto Verganti found that designers and architects were frequently acting as «interpreters» of socio-cultural dynamics and as brokers of product languages to come up with new meanings beyond what users could imagine but were actually looking for. But there is still a lot to know about the figure of the interpreters and this is exactly the main objective of the research: how to find and attract these people? How to prepare and engage them in the re-interpretation process? Thus, the thesis will try to leverage on sense making to explore the path towards innovation as a re-interpretation process, and more precisely, have a deeper understanding on interpreters.

RESEARCH METHOD AND NEXT STEPSDue to the limited research in the field, our study is explorative in its nature. The method of analysis adopted is Case Study Research as it allows developing a holistic and contextualized analysis. It is thought this method properly suits the complexity of the issues tackled, the type of research questions and the initial exploratory nature of this research because it allows us to not only explore the phenomenon in its complexity but also to identify those variables that are actually critical (Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007; Yin, 1999). Aligned with this thinking, Meredith (1998) cites three outstanding strengths of Case Study Research:• The case study method is suitable for early exploratory investigations where the variables are still unknown and holistic understanding of the phenomenon is still missing• The phenomenon can be studied in its natural setting; the observation of actual practice helps the understanding of the case, inviting to the generation of meaningful and relevant theory• The case study method allows to answer the questions of why, what and how with a relatively full understanding of the nature and complexity of the complete phenomenon

It is based on three in-depth studies of two large multinational companies and a small enterprise that in their corresponding projects have call together several interpreters to develop and discuss new emerging meanings for a specific product in their portfolio. The study aims to describe in detail the process of selection, briefing, and interaction occurred with the interpreters as well as their impact on envisioning new meaning.

KEY REFERENCESBerger, P. and Luckmann T. (1967). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. London, Penguin Books.Clarck K. B. (1985). The interaction of design hierarchies and market concepts in technological evolution. Research Policy, 14.Eisenhardt and Graebner (2007). Theory building from cases: opportunities and challenges. Academy of Management Journal 50(1), 25-32. Review, vol. 14 (4): pp. 532-550.Gioia, D. A. and Chittipeddi, K. (1991). Sensemaking and sensegiving in strategic change initiation. Strategic Management Journal, 12, 433-448.Gioia, D. A., and Mehra, A. (1996). Sensemaking in organizations-Weick, KE.

Academy of Management Review, 21: 1226-1230.Hansen, M. and Birkinshaw, J. M. (2007). The Innovation, Value Chain. Harvard Business Review, 85(6), (2007). Jahnke, M. (2013). Meaning in the Making – Introducing a Hermeneutic Perspective on the Contribution of Design Practice to Innovation. (Doctoral Thesis), University of Gothenburg, Sweden.Lester, R. K., Piore, Michael J., Malek, Kamal, M. (1998). Interpretive Management, Harvard Business Review, March-April, (86-96).Meredith (1998). Building operations management theory through case and field research. Journal of Operations Management, vol. 16, pp. 441-54.Simon, H. (1982). The Sciences of the Artificial, 2nd ed., Cambidge, MA, The MIT Press.Verganti, R. (2009). Design-Driven Innovation. Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean. Harvard Business Press, Boston.Verganti, R. and Öberg, Å. (2013). Interpreting and envisioning – A Hermeneutic Framework to look at radical innovation of meanings. Industrial Marketing Management Journal, 42(1), 86-95.Weick, K. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage.Yin (1999). Case study research: Design and methods. (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Öberg, Å. (2012). Innovation driven by Meaning. (Licenciate), Mälardalen University, Västerås, Sweden.

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Andreas Benker is a PhD candidate at Aalto University in the department of Management and International Business. He holds a Bachelor's degree in International Marketing from Pforzheim University of Applied Sciences, a Bachelor's degree in Marketing from Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education, and a Master's degree in International Design Business Management from Aalto University.

Andreas has work experience in the areas of product management and brand communication, having worked for large companies in the automotive, sporting goods, cosmetics, and chemical industry. The latter was also the setting for his Master’s thesis, in which he investigated the potential value of a design department within a materials manufacturing company to consult clients throughout their materials selection process.

The focus of his PhD is on the importance of product usability within the healthcare industry and the practices that lead to such. Andreas investigates the management of usability engineering processes and user involvement methods that help medical device manufacturers enhance their products' usability.

A N D R E A S B E N K E Randreas@desmanetwork.eu

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The research is conducted within a research and development department of Philips Oy in Helsinki, Finland. It is a medical device development project in which I am a team member, actively contributing to the product development process, and conducting my research. My main role is to bridge academia with industry and bring theoretical concepts into the practical setting. Furthermore, the practical insights I get on the job form the basis of my academic contribution in terms of publications at the same time.

My areas of research focus on usability engineering methods, the design, development, implementation, and management of such. Furthermore, part of my research will be dedicated towards user involvement methods that are applicable in the development of complex medical devices.

+ DESIGNING FOR USABILITY OF COMPLEX MEDICAL DEVICES

BACKGROUND AND THEORETICAL POSITIONINGThe research emerges from the practical setting I am working in. My industrial partner is Philips Oy, where I work within the MRI Therapy department, which again is part of the Philips Healthcare division. I am part of a research and development team that is developing the magnetic resonance (MR) subsystem of a medical device that merges radiation therapy with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology into a single cancer treatment system.

My main area of responsibility is the usability aspect of the MR subsystem. This includes involving users in the design iterations as well as ensuring compliance with the usability engineering practices throughout the development process. Since I am actively participating in the development project, I am able to learn about medical device development processes, the technologies themselves, as well as the currently applied usability practices and user involvement approaches. These practical insights from that specific project form the basis of my research, which is about usability practices throughout the development of complex medical systems. I have developed a model based on the practical insights as well as other usability engineering in complex systems and user involvement methods from literature (see figure 1), which provides an initial starting point for how to embed these methods within medical device development processes.

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Figure 1: Usability Engineering Activities in Medical Device Development

Theoretical PositioningIn literature, usability engineering is decoded into a method that if applied guarantees highly usable products, in theory. Nielsen (1993) describes five attributes that are to be considered throughout product development since they are crucial for a system’s usability. These include learnability, memorability, efficiency, low error rate, and satisfaction. The higher a system scores on these dimensions, the better its usability. In practice it becomes more difficult to implement usability engineering in a systemic way that considers all of the usability dimensions proposed. One of the reasons is the involvement of different disciplines in the product development processes and the resulting tension between competing product dimensions because «each group concentrates on a single dimension rather than looking at the whole user experience» (Quesenbery, 2004, p. 89). According to Quesenbery (2003, 2004), the five usability attributes can and even should have different importance and weight when defining a product's design requirements. Depending on the system’s application and the context it is placed in, some of the usability attributes need to be prioritized. Furthermore, people interacting with systems have individual needs, capabilities, and preferences, which can have an impact on the perceived usability of a given design.

Since in the practical case, the system is very complex and embedded in the context of healthcare, it remains to be seen to which extent these «universal» usability guidelines apply. Research conducted by Gabbard et al. (2003) provides a first idea about the applicability of usability engineering throughout the development of complex systems. The process described a method that includes task analysis, expert evaluation, scenario-based user evaluation, and final evaluation of the completed system. This approach potentially enhances the usability engineering process within healthcare, making it less cost- and time-intensive while increasing its applicability and benefits for manufacturers of medical devices.

In healthcare, it needs to be considered though that patient safety is at the core of any activity when patients are exposed to medical devices in a clinical setting. Therefore, companies developing medical devices consider safety and

the avoidance of potential hazards as well as use errors top priorities throughout their product development processes. Especially in the case of complex medical systems, it is crucial for manufacturers to address and mitigate risks for human errors throughout the development process since they can increase the more complex a technical system becomes (Hyman, 1994). Product usability is becoming increasingly important throughout the development process of medical devices in order to design efficient, effective, and safe systems. Therefore, manufacturers also have to understand the clinical setting in which their systems will be placed if they want to minimize the potential errors that can occur when the devices are applied in practice due to human failure, system error or the interaction of both (Kohn, Corrigan and Donaldson, 2000).

RESEARCH QUESTIONProduct usability is given much attention in healthcare and medical device development. There are international standards about usability engineering manufacturers of medical systems have to comply with in order to minimize potential use errors of the future product. Therefore, usability is considered as important for operators’ and patients’ safety foremost. However, in literature the concept of usability encompasses more variables, including how subjectively pleasing a product is for a user and what the resulting user experience is. It remains unclear to which extent this broader concept of product usability is applicable for medical systems that are operated in a clinical setting. Therefore, the research project strives to answer the following questions:

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«What are the factors that constrain or foster usability engineering processes throughout the development of complex medical devices?»

«How can usability engineering processes be managed to ensure that the market-ready system is consistent with its intended usability?»

RESEARCH METHOD AND NEXT STEPSSince I am basically working in the case to be studied, ongoing observations are the main method to get a better understanding about the internal development process, the different disciplines involved, as well as their way of thinking and working. I am part of the development team, which means I am not detached from the conversations and knowledge creation processes, which makes me an action researcher – actively shaping the current situation that is being researched. These methods relate to the investigation of internal processes and getting an understanding of how usability processes are and could be approached. At some point it will become useful to also compare the usability approach in the MR-Linac project with that of other development processes in order to make a comparison study and bring in expertise from the outside into the current and/or future development projects within Philips MRI Therapy department.

KEY REFERENCESGabbard, J. L., Hix, D., Swan, J. E., Livingston, M. A., Höllerer, T. H., Julier, S. J., Brown, D. and Baillot, Y., (2003). Usability engineering for complex interactive systems development. Proceedings of Human Systems Integration Symposium 2003. Engineering for Usability. June 23-25, 2003, Vienna, VA.Hyman, W. A., (1994). Errors in the use of medical equipment. In: M.S. Bogner, ed. 1994. Human Error in Medicine. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc., Ch.15.Kohn, L. T., Corrigan, J. M. and Donaldson, M. S., eds. (2000). To Err is Human. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.Nielsen, J., (1993). Usability Engineering. Burlington, MA: Morgan Kaufmann.Quesenbery, W., (2003): Dimensions of Usability. In: Albers, M. J. and Mazur, M. B., ed. 2003. Content and Complexity: Information Design in Technical Communication. London, UK: Routledge, pp. 75-94.Quesenbery, W. (2004). Balancing the 5Es: Usability. Cutter IT Journal. 17 (2), pp. 4-11.

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Marzia Aricò has a multidisciplinary background with a BA in Industrial Design in Italy and an MA in Innovation Management in the UK, both achieved with distinction. She has always been passionate about the effect of design thinking on innovation processes, working as «bilingual facilitator» between business practitioners and academia to help produce productive friction.

During the last four years she has been mainly working with Fortune 500 corporations, helping over 60 organizations across 21 different industries researching and exploring the Future of Work through collaborative

M A R Z I A A R I C Ò

intelligence. Here in the role of Head of Innovation and Design, she has been researching, envisioning, investigating and visualizing future scenarios through an in-depth exploration of the evolution of society, culture, technology, resources and demography. In this role she has also co-designed the tools and methods for collaborative research to happen both face-to-face and online.

Her career has also seen her working closely with ICT start-ups and in particularly with a People Accelerator programme in north of Italy. Here, as Innovation Consultant, she has been advising on future directions to take for a successful programme, to meet the goal of creating 103 start-ups in 4 years.

In October 2013, Marzia joined the DESMA programme in Oslo partnering with the service design firm Livework.

marzia@desmanetwork.eu

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The current economic and social environment has put businesses under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Richard Florida calls it the Great Reset, which is not simply a crisis that represents a cycle, but a broad, fundamental transformation of the recent economic and social order (2010, p.5). This reset brings a tornado of change, which is unprecedented in terms of its speed and magnitude. Over time, this scenario is producing a shift from an industrial to a service economy, which is mainly driven by product saturation, information technology and urbanisation (Gary, 2012, p.16). In this environment organizations need to rethink their structure, the way they operate, and what and how they deliver to customers. Organizations are designed for and within the industrial economy, and they are not prepared to face the new set of challenges that the service economy is presenting to them. Businesses find themselves in a fast-paced and connected world, where customers share globally their dissatisfaction over any service or product that do not meet their expectations. As Dave Gary observes, the «expired ways of organizing often results in unhappy clients,

+IMPACTING BUSINESS THROUGH DESIGN

demotivated employees, and missed opportunities for new value creation» (2012, p.XIV).

It quickly becomes clear that at the heart of a resilient organization, that is able to thrive in such context, are people: customers and employees. So what are the tools, practices and process needed to build an organization that is adaptable to fast change, able to respond and anticipate customer needs, and apt at engaging its employees?

Service design thinking, being a people centred approach, has the potential to provide the tools for organizations to bring customer experience at the heart of their business, and a way to engage at best their employees. It provides a unique holistic view of the totality of interactions a service is constituted of, offering an intentionally designed experience of the organization (Julier et al., 2009, p.158). The service design approach represents the potential to achieve business sustainable growth, in such a challenging context.

Figure 1. Status quo.

The figure above represents the status quo. At the centre there is a growing tension between organizations and customers, between what customers expect, and what organizations actually deliver. Businesses are struggling to deliver

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the experience customers expect, leaving them frustrated, with the ultimate consequence of often loosing them in favour of the competition.

Historically, this growing tension has been tackled through an analytic business approach that certainly is able to provide solutions that can be implemented within organizations, but has a very narrow understanding of customers and employees, their behaviours, expectations, and emotions. On the other side service design has recently started to provide solutions based on an in-depth understanding of people, but with a narrow awareness of how organizations actually operate, and what they can absorb in terms of solutions.

Figure 2. Proposal.

So far several scholars and practitioners have explored the potential of the service design approach to solve pressing organizational challenges, but there is still a general lack of studies on its implementation within organizations, and above all lack of clear data to showcase its real impact on business.

BACKGROUND AND THEORETICAL POSITIONINGThis research places itself into a multidisciplinary space between traditional service design theory, organizational design, and behavioural economics. Following are the key concepts behind this research project, and a brief description of the practical context.

The tension between Organizations and Customers In the year 2000 Clark et al. argue the need for alignment among all the different stakeholders involved in the creation of the service concept: different corporate functions, employees and customers (p.74). This is needed in order to «minimize the gap between expectations and service delivery» (Golstein et al., 2002). This tension, which is still strongly present in any business across different industries, will be investigated in detail to understand its nature and causes. The key perspective of this research will be not only to understand the problem behind the tension, but also to identify where it sits inside the organization, to be able to design a solution that can be absorbed by the business. This understanding will inform the creation of the model that this research is aiming to build.

Outside-in mindsetIn his Reorganize for Resilience, Ranjay Gulati presents a compelling overview of the kind of uncertainty organizations find themselves in, and the consequences that this produces. His research shows that during the last three recessions on average 60% of companies survived to the downturn,

while 40% did not, they simply disappeared (2009, p.2). Those that survived can be classified under two different typologies. Those who just set survival as their primary goal waiting for the storm to pass, and those that managed to thrive while surviving, managing to turn adversity into an opportunity. Gulati’s research suggests that the former are built around an «inside-out» mindset, while the latter operate on the base of an «outside-in» mindset. The main difference resides in the strategy they choose to adopt. The first group have a narrow understanding of their customers; they simply choose to push their existing products/services portfolio. The second group have customers at the heart of their strategy, delivering creatively on the base of market opportunities. The second group result to be far more resilient than the first one. The «outside-in» approach enables organizations to be adaptable, f lexible, and responsive to market shifts. Gulati’s research clearly shows that being close to customers, plays an important role in being ahead of the curve. This research will explore how the service design approach can help organizations to implement the outside-in mindset in practice.

Users vs. CustomersThere is a fine line between the definition of users and customers. These two words are often considered interchangeable, but they are actually profoundly different. A «user» is anyone who uses your product or service. A «customer» is anyone who pays for your product or service. Designers are trained to observe reality, to understand the «user». Designers are experts on users experience; they need this in-depth knowledge in order to design superior customer experiences. Businesses on the other side know

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a great deal about customers, those who make them money. Virtually any business collects data from their customers profile, usage, satisfaction, etc. A huge set of data that rarely organizations know how to use at best, and that as it stands says very little about their customer experience. Designers know how to understand and react to people’s needs intuitively; businesses know their customers based on data and measurements. The overlap between this two worlds could create the conditions for businesses to not only be able to react promptly when needed, but also to be proactive and strategic, to anticipate and avoid possible failures and critical points.

BackgroundDuring the last 10 years Livework, the first service design firm in the world, has developed a set of tools to help organizations to understand their customers, in order to create increasingly better customer experiences. During this period Livework managed to develop an extensive library of tools and a framework of reference, which could be used to create a larger impact over businesses overhaul. As partner in this research project, Livework will cooperate sharing the tools, framework, and methodology they developed, and providing the arena to test the model that this research project is aiming to provide.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS1. How can the service design approach be implemented in business strategy? 2. What is the right model to create a shared service concept between the organization, employees, and customers? 3. Is it possible to measure its real impact on the business?

RESEARCH METHOD AND NEXT STEPSThis research will initially make use of an experimental, interpretative and ref lexive approach, inspired by the work developed by Marcus Jahnke (2013). The starting point of this research will be an empirical study that will be related to a critical investigation of concepts and methods used in the design management theory, in search of a framework for interpreting the interventions (2013, p. 45).

Experimental – a number of pilots will be actively set up with three organizations from different industries (Telecom, Financial Services, and Energy). This approach aims at instrumentally opening up many possibilities rather than verifying an already defined assumption or understanding. Having three different sectors involved will provide valuable cross-sector benchmarking data.

Interpretative – in such experiments the researcher will play the role of coach, having the possibility to collect data and critique the results in order to inform the creation of the model.

Ref lexive – the material and data collected will be used to then pivot the model and inform an iterative approach.

Following this approach the researcher will be immersed in the environment as an experienced practitioner, creating the possibility of «drawing on experience to see the situations under study, and established theory in the area, in a new light» (p. 58). KEY REFERENCESAnthony, S.D. (2012). The New Corporate Garage, Harvard Business Review PressClark, G., Johnston, R., Shulver, M. (2000). Exploiting the service concept for service design and development, Sage PublicationsFreed, L. (2013). Are You Listening to Your Most Important Customers? Harvard Business Review BlogGeorges, A., Romme, L. (2003). Making a Difference: Organization as Design, Organization Science 14, 558-573Goldstein, S. M., Johnston, R., Duffy, J., Rao, J. (2002). The service concept: the missing link in service design approach? Journal of Operations Management 20, 121-134Gray, D. (2012). The connected company, O’Reilly MediaGulati, R. (2009). Reorganize for resilience, Harvard Business PressJahnke, M. (2013). Meaning in the making, University of GothenburgJulier, G. and Moor, L. (editors) (2009). Design and Creativity: Policy, Management and Practice. Oxford:Berg, pp.157-173.Polaine, A., Løvlie, L., Reason, B. (2013). Service Design, Rosenfeld MediaVisser, F.S., Stappers, P.J., van der Lugt, R. (2005). Contextmapping: experiences from practice, CoDesign

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Veronica Bluguermann was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1980. She graduated as Industrial Designer in 2006 from the

University of Buenos Aires. She started working during her studies in different design agencies, developing products such

as: furniture, electronic devices and packaging. For the lapse of two year she was assisting and teaching in morphology classes. The last working experience in Buenos Aires, took place at the

Metropolitan Design Museum, a public institution, where she was part of a research team. In 2009, she enrolled in the MA in

Industrial and Strategic Design at Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture. Several Internships, in Finland

and abroad, gave her expertise on Service Design.

V E R O N I C A B L U G U E R M A N N

veronica@desmanetwork.eu

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City governments are in charge of organizing sanitation, utilities, land usage, housing, and transportation. Since the Industrial Revolution cities have faced problems in urban planning related with clear cut goals as paving the street, housing, solving dread diseases. Today, about half of the world’s population live in cities, driving municipal governments to face problems of increasing complexity, such as ageing population, global warming, poverty and education. These kinds of problems are inherently different from the problems that scientists and perhaps some classes of engineers deal with. Planning problems are inherently wicked. As distinguished from problems in the natural sciences, which are definable and separable and may have solutions that are findable. Therefore, governments are in great need for new approaches to tackle city challenges..

+COLLABORAT- ING THROUGH DESIGN TO FRAME CITIES' COMPLEX PROBLEMS

Citymart provides an innovative approach to accelerate the process of solving urban and social challenges. Since 2009, they run a program to connect solution providers with decision-makers in cities around the world. Through the program Call for Solutions, Citymart offers cities the possibility to open up their challenges to the public in order to attract solution providers from around the world. According to the company data, the benefit of this open process is that cities are able to acquire business intelligence which reduces the cost of R&D needed to develop a solution from scratch and often to re-invent the solution that have been already implemented somewhere else.

One of the main challenges in this process of helping cities finding solutions is to identify the problems the city needs to address. In addition to the complexity of problems, there is a lack of tools in the public administration for this purpose. Governments see the potential of using Information and Comunication Technology (ICT) to improve the service offered to citizens, increase transparency and accountability, among other benefits. For example, governments are using crowdsourcing platforms to reach out to citizens who are willing to provide insights on problems that need to be solved. However, the great potential of the new models of participation in decision-making is still not fully understood.

This research aims at exploring ICT platforms for bringing collaboration in the identification and framing of cities challenges. This research project is based on case studies emerging from the action research process, understood as a research embedded within the process of design. This essay summarizes

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the activities conducted during the first cycle of the research process. Finally, a framework for challenge framing is presented which will guide the future design experiments driven with design methods for exploring, generating and evaluating concepts.

BACKGROUND AND THEORETICAL POSITIONINGThe focus of this research is based on exploring means for identification and definition of social and urban problems in cities. The nature of these problems has changed in the last decades. Planning, during the industrial age, was dominated by the pervasive idea of efficiency; a process of designing problem-solutions that might be installed and operated cheaply. It was fairly easy to get consensus on the nature of problems, so we could rely upon the efficiency expert to diagnose a problem and then solve it (Webber & Rittel, 1973). However today, municipal governments are facing challenges of increasing complexity, such as globalization, ageing population, or climate change. These so-called «wicked problem», are a «class of social system problems which are ill-formulated, where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision makers with conf licting values, and where the ramifications in the whole system are thoroughly confusing.» (Rittel, 1967) In the process of tacking wicked problems, one of the most intractable problems is that of defining problems (of knowing what distinguishes an observed condition from a desired condition) and of locating problems (finding where in the complex causal networks the trouble really lies)(Webber & Rittel, 1973). This is what Dorst (2006) pointed out as an amusing description of what confronts designers in every new situation in the process of «approaching a

design problem» or «dealing with a problematic situation». There is an uniqueness of the design approach for problem-solving. Hatchuel (2002) identifies three main characteristics: 1) design situation includes the (unexpected) expansion of the initial concepts in which the situation is initially framed 2) design situation requires the design and use of «learning devices» in order to get to a solution. They include experiments and simulation techniques, and 3) in designing, the understanding and designing of the social interactions is part of the design process itself. As Louis Bucciarelli, states: «Design is fundamentally a social process» ref lecting the strong approach in design towards involving users or stakeholders in the design process.Participatory Design (PD) is a design practice that involves different non-designers in various co-design activities throughout the design process (Sanders, Brandt, & Binder, 2010). By non-designers we refer to potential users, other external stakeholders and/or people on the development team who are from disciplines other than design such as those in marketing, engineering, sales, etc. However, one of the constrains of Participatory Design is that it lacks methods for large scale projects, as required in the Public sector. In order to address this challenge, online platforms have the potential to reach out the critical mass and engage them in new ways of creation.

This new model of collaborative creation has appeared under many names, including peer production, user-powered systems, user-generated content, collaborative systems, community systems, social systems, social search, social media, collective intelligence, wikinomics, crowd wisdom, smart mobs, crowdsourcing, and human computation (Doan,

Ramakrishnan, & Halevy, 2010). It is a form of collective action that occurs when large numbers of people work independently on a single project, often modular in its nature. Such projects typically take place on the Internet using social software and computer-supported collaboration tools such as wiki technologies. Thus, this research aims at addressing the following research question:

RESEARCH QUESTIONHow can Design Methods facilitate collaborative creation in identifying and framing city challenges, with the use of ICT platforms?

RESEARCH METHOD AND NEXT STEPSThe research process is based on action research, understood as a research embedded within the process of design. According to Swann (2002), it is a practical research methodology that usually is described as requiring three conditions to be met. First, its subject matter normally is situated in a social practice that needs to be changed; second, it is a participatory activity where the researchers work in equitable collaboration; and third, the project proceeds through a spiral of cycles of planning, acting, observing, and ref lecting in a systematic and documented study.

The first cycle of the action research process explored the research context with an ethnographic approach in order to ref lect and frame the research problem. Following, is a summary of the key activities conducted in this period followed by a framework for identifying and framing challenges, which will guide the future design experiments.

1 - EmpathizingI started with an ethnographic approach to gain understanding on

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Citymart services and process for creating and delivering the services. I spent 5 months working with the development team in charge of developing the online platforms and 3 month working as a sales representative with the City Department in charge of engaging cities in the program. In addition, I conducted individual interviews with Citymart team to unveil their experience of offering a service and gain insights on their general belief and opinions.

From the interviews with the research team I noticed a gap between the researcher’s appreciation of a solution and the experts or juries who later in the process evaluate those solutions. Therefore, I analyzed the data collected by Citymart online platform to analyze how juries evaluated solutions. This different way to assess the value of a solution could be explained by the different knowledge and expertise of the juries compared to the researchers at Citymart. Moreover, it could also ref lect the different interpretation of the problem the city is addressing. This different interpretation of a problem ref lects the complexity of the challenges and the different set of knowledge and expertise needed to understand the problem. Therefore, I decided to explore the possibility of collaboration in defining a problem and finding solutions for the problem.

2 - Exploring research topic areas - Design MethodsI facilitated two sessions with the researchers' team to explore collaboration in their research process using a diverse range of online platforms. One of the sessions had also the intention to explore a user-center perspective on their process. This experience led me to ref lect on the possibly of collaboration for identifying and defining the cities’ problems, one of the fundamental steps in Citymart process.

3 - Framework for cities challenges formulationThe first loop of the action research process concludes with the challenge framework, a model that will be used to guide the future design experiments. The first column of the framework describes the steps of problem framing, while on the top row are described the different participation models based on grouping network of stakeholders. The Closed group is formed only by city officials; the limited model refers to teams of experts ( juries, organizations and Citymart employees); and finally the open model involves citizens.

This framework maps different scenarios to be addressed in the design process. In the future steps, I will conduct design experiments by combining different stages of problem definition with the closed, limited or open models. It is expected that the outcome of these experiments will provide knowledge

on the possibilities of using online participatory design methods for challenge framing in cities.

KEY REFERENCESDorst, K. (2006). Design Problems and Design Paradoxes. Design Issues, 22(3), 4-17.Hatchuel, A. (2002). «Towards Design Theory and Expandable Rationality: The Unfinished Program of Herbert Simon,» Journal of Management and Governance 5:3-4.Rittel, H. W. (1967). «Wicked Problems,» Management Science, (December 1967), vol. 4, no. 14, B-141-42.Sanders, E. B., Brandt, E., & Binder, T. (2010). A Framework for Organizing the Tools and Techniques of Participatory Design.Swann, C. (2002). Action Research and the Practice of Design. Design Issues, 2 (1998), 63-66.Webber, M. M., & Rittel, H. W. (1973). Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning. Policy Sciences, 4 (December 1969), 155-169.

Challenge definition stage / Definied by

Closed Limited Open

Problem identification Internal process in the municipality for spotting problems

Use of the experts knowledge to collect problems

The community provides insights on problems they have identified in their surroundings.

Rating A city manager evaluates and selects the most pressing problems

The experts select the most pressing problems

The community selects the most pressing problems

Framing / Scoping The city defines the criteria

The experts define the criteria

The community helps to provide insights on the problem

Describing A city manager describes the challenge

The experts describe the challenge community describe the challenge

Sharing Across city departments Among city network to the world

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After receiving his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Andrew began his professional career as a graphic designer at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Driven by a desire to understand what makes designers tick, he chose to pursue a Master’s degree at North Carolina State University, a program focused on design research and pedagogy. At NC State he gained experience with design theory while practicing approaches for interaction design, service design and strategic design. Andre's Master’s thesis attempted to bridge the gap between design practitioners and «non-designers» through a system of digital and physical design tools that could support university-level students engaging in public service projects with their local communities.

Through the DESMA program, Andrew is working with the Swedish design consultancy Veryday to investigate ways to create positive change in complex situations within organizations and communities. His current work revolves around a co-design project that reaches out to «lead users» as partners in product innovation. Using an experimental approach, the project team has explored tools and formats to foster participatory innovation through creation and dialogue. In the next stages of his research he aims to develop design experiments for collaborative meaning making within organizations.

A N D R E W W H I T C O M B

andrew@desmanetwork.eu

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The concept of method has played a critical role in the development of design research and professional design practice. Across many fields of research, the term «method» stands for a clearly described procedure that enables researchers to compare and validate results across space and time. However in design, where novelty is a principle concern, methods for repeatability may be unnecessary or even undesirable (Cross, 2010). Yet both professional practitioners and academic researchers have called upon design methods to address complex challenges facing contemporary society. The growing interest in designerly approaches to working highlights a need to understand how people with different professional backgrounds, perspectives, and personalities participate in design.

The role of personal experience, as well as the complex social and political aspects of design work, challenge a view of design methods as procedures for achieving effective design (Schön, 1995). In short, the people who participate in designing play an essential role in shaping design outcomes. As a result an increasing amount of research has focused on activities of co-creation and co-design. Co-design practitioners open up the design process by actively involving the stakeholders of a product to explore possibilities for future artefacts, services, and even experiences. Yet, alongside the growth of co-design, even more tools and methods have emerged to support its development and practice.

As designers look for ways to effectively engage complex systems and networks of stakeholders (Krippendorff, 2006), methods appear positioned to play a continued role in how people understand, learn, and practice design. Beginning with my participation in a professional project, the Lead User Innovation Lab, my research investigates the practice of design methods in collaborative efforts. In particular, I focus on possibilities for

+DESIGN METHODS AND COLLABORATIVE EXPLORATION

supporting stakeholders with diverse backgrounds in the collaborative exploration of meanings around experiences in organizations and communities.

BACKGROUND AND THEORETICAL POSITIONING«Design methods« have a storied history in the development of design research. Additionally, methods have received a great deal of attention in professional design, with several prominent firms and academic programs publishing toolkits and method catalogues in recent years (Hanington and Martin, 2012; Kumar, 2012). My investigation builds on historical and contemporary developments in design research and practice. In particular, three arenas of theory provide a foundation for my work: the history of methods in design, prominent themes in the aims of methods, and the relationship between pragmatic inquiry and design.

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The first arena relevant to my work focuses on the debate over «methods» in design, as well as the practical descriptions of methods in professional design. Discussion of methods in design date back at least to the Bauhaus in early 20th century, however methods as a formal area of research in design began with the «design methods movement» that took place in two generations during the 1960s and 1970s (Cross, 2010).

The two generations of design methods emphasize different aspects of method. During the first generation, design methods scholars described clear, and often rational, steps for engaging complex problems. Moving into the second generation, however, scholars started to view problem-solving as a process based on personal knowledge, where the inquirer iterates through framing experiments, continually setting a problem and testing it (Schön, 1995). Viewing design as ref lective-practice emphasizes personal experience and intuition, leaving little or no room for a procedural approach of design by method.

Methods persist in contemporary design, often through the practical need to establish a point of focus for collaborators. For instance, leading scholars in Participatory Design describe method as «a combination of tools, toolkits, techniques and/or games that are strategically put together to address defined goals within the research plan» (Sanders et al., 2010). As such, design methods can be seen as a way to assist researchers and professionals in deliberately and rigorously exploring the past, present, and future of people’s lives.

Reviewing the history of methods in design reveals four themes, providing

a basis for examining methods in contemporary design practice and research. Presented here as separate areas that evolved over time, these themes blur together in practices as designers constantly jump between describing the present and imagining the future. Specifically, methods in design appear to support four general aims: manage complexity, engage participants, understand context, and explore possibilities.

The first theme in design methods emerged from insights revealed through ergonomics and human factors research. Recognizing that products should conform to the structure of the human body, designers to seek an understanding of the impact of their final designs on the people that use them. Contemporary designers often explicitly adopt a «user-centered» perspective, utilizing methods such as contextual inquiry that aim to uncover and align with more than human anatomy, but to how people experience diverse contexts in daily life.

A second theme revolves around methods for managing complexity, which emerged with the recognition that the objects of design exist as parts of systems (Jones, 1970). In order to manage the complex relationships of systems, designers started to employ methods that map the connections and networks surrounding a design situation. Nowadays mapping serves as an important tool for externalizing concepts held by designers, end-users, and other stakeholders. Thirdly, designers have incorporated methods focused on including diverse stakeholders in the design process. Guided by democratic ideals and a notion of people as «skilled users»

of technology, Participatory Design researchers in the 1970s began developing methods for working with people who do not have design training. Additionally, moving away from direct collaboration, designers have also engaged participants through probes that provoke inspirational experiences and materials for design (Gaver et al., 1999).

The final theme prominent in design methods involves exploring possibilities. Exploration appears prominently throughout the design process, often in the form of prototyping. Through a process of continual learning, prototyping utilizes iterative testing to simultaneously explore and discover problems and solutions (Cross, 2010). In the end, exploration plays a role in each of the previous themes, as designers learn-by-doing in the open-ended situations in which they work.

Finally, pragmatist inquiry serves as both a way to articulate the activities of collaborative design, and provides a foundation for my research approach. In particular, the pragmatist ideas of experience and abduction support a designerly approach to research. Personal experience is the basis for inquiry, as people «move back and forth between practices (primary experiences) and ref lections (secondary experiences) to develop practical knowledge» (Steen, 2013). Secondly, abduction represents the intuitive leap that all people make when trying to learn about the world, a process that I emphasize in my work through the deliberate use of creative experiments.

Design methods today emerged out of the evolution of design research and practice. The four major themes identified in the development of

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design methods provide clarity regarding the diverse aims methods support in design. Finally, rather than an entirely rational or systematic process, pragmatist notions of experience and abduction in inquiry provide an underlying foundation for design research that spans tools, methods, and approaches.

RESEARCH QUESTIONRather than attempting to nail down specific questions from the very beginning of my research, I have chosen a more open approach to investigating my topic by first experiencing design methods in practice. Still, a few general questions have guided my conversations, actions, and attention:

• How are design methods defined in professional design practice?

• How do design methods relate to the methods of other disciplines?

• What tools can support the effective use of design methods by non-designers?

In addition, some concerns guiding my study of design methods are: collaboration, complexity, democracy, exploration, and learning. Currently I am narrowing my focus to address a more specific area within the topic of design methods that connects my experience with my concerns as a researcher.

RESEARCH METHOD AND NEXT STEPSMy research follows an exploratory approach that utilizes methods as a means for shifting perspective and learning in response to my research question. Thus far, two approaches closely align with my investigation: «action research» and «constructive research» (Koskinen et al., 2011). As in action research, collaboration is an essential part of my inquiry. Holding

a position in practice supports my approach through ongoing experience and dialogue with my colleagues about the situations we encounter related to design methods.

By embracing my position in professional practice I have opened my methodology to overlap with the methodology of the project in which I am participating, the Lead User Innovation Lab (LUIL). A collaboration among three organizations (a research institute, an international corporation, and Veryday, where I am positioned) the LUIL has brought together a multidisciplinary team to explore how to, «provide improved conditions for external actors to create innovations by companies and other organizations actively open up their innovation processes and to develop greater skills and scheme on methods for working with lead users in Sweden» (translated from original Swedish).

Participating with the project team of the LUIL, I have conducted several small experiments that serve as a foundation for the more nuanced investigation into design methods in the next stages of my research. After summarizing and ref lecting with the project team, I plan to collaborate with another member of the DESMA network to develop design experiments informed by my theoretical framework that investigate the organizational design of social enterprises.

KEY REFERENCESCross, N., (2010). Designerly Ways of Knowing, Softcover reprint of hardcover 1st ed. 2006. ed. Springer.Gaver, B., Dunne, T., Pacenti, E., (1999). Design: Cultural probes. interactions 6, 21-29.Hanington, B., Martin, B., (2012). Universal Methods of Design: 100 Ways to Research Complex Problems, Develop Innovative Ideas, and Design Effective Solutions. Rockport Publishers.Jones, J. C. (1970). Design methods: seeds of human futures. Wiley-Interscience, London.Koskinen, I., Zimmerman, J., Binder, T., Redstrom, J., Wensveen, S., (2011). Design Research through Practice: From the Lab, Field, and Showroom. Elsevier.Krippendorff, K., (2006). The semantic turn: a new foundation for design. CRC/Taylor & Francis, Boca Raton.Kumar, V., (2012). 101 design methods: a structured approach for driving innovation in your organization. Wiley; (John Wiley [distributor], Hoboken, N. J; Chichester.Sanders, E. B.-N., Brandt, E., Binder, T., (2010). A framework for organizing the tools and techniques of participatory design, in: Proceedings of the 11th Biennial Participatory Design Conference, PDC ’10. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp. 195-198.Schön, D. A., (1995). The ref lective practitioner: how professionals think in action. Arena, Aldershot (England).Steen, M., (2013). Co-Design as a Process of Joint Inquiry and Imagination. Des. Issues 29, 16-28.

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Ulises Navarro Aguiar is a researcher and doctoral student

working at the intersection of design and strategy at the Business & Design Lab of the

University of Gothenburg. He is currently conducting research

within Volvo Group and is part of DESMA, the European Design Management Research

Network funded by the European Commission’s Marie Curie Actions

FP7.

Ulises is a holder of a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design from

ITESM in Mexico and a Master’s degree in International Business

and Design Management from a joint programme between the

University of Salford in the UK and Euromed Management in France. Prior to coming to Sweden, he was working as a

service designer with Nekoé, a service innovation agency located in Orléans, France. As part of his

work there, he was responsible for the design of Umagus, a

strategic digital platform aimed at facilitating service innovation

processes in organizations. Previously, in Mexico, Ulises

collaborated with CEMEX Research Group in projects

related to innovation and serious gaming.

U L I S E S N A V A R R O A G U I A R

ulises@desmanetwork.eu

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We are living in exciting times for design at large. In recent years, the concept of «design thinking» took business by surprise and started a very enriching conversation about the role of design in organizations. It accelerated the already-in-progress shift from design as a function in product development, toward design as strategic asset for firms. Today, discourses in design management mostly revolve around strategy and innovation. However, most research linking design and strategy adheres to either one of these two streams: on the one hand, orthodox views in strategic management which lock design into limited managerial frameworks; and on the other, the «design thinking» discourse which encourages the idea of using a designerly way of thinking in strategy development, abstracting design work into a set of principles or methods, but ultimately lacking a critical perspective rooted in practice. The intent of this research work is to provide a richly textured account of the interrelation and interdependence between strategizing and designing, and the politics associated with this relationship in the organizational context. As I engage in this journey, I will be seeking to avoid taking for granted conventional wisdoms. Instead of assuming that design strategy is a ‘thing’ and exploring it based on a straightforward conceptual definition, this study stands for a broader conceptualization of what design strategy could be. This study will explore the emergence of design strategy at Volvo Product Design by looking at practices, and adopting a pragmatic ethnographic approach.

BACKGROUND AND THEORETICAL POSITIONINGIn recent years, discourses about the strategic importance of design have been emerging. This occurrence is not restricted to specialized design management literature, as innovation management journals (see Erichsen & Christensen, 2013) and management journals of more general orientation (see Stigliani & Ravasi, 2012) are also recognizing the impact of design on business. This trend indicates a clear shift in roles from design as a function in product development, toward design as strategic asset for firms. According to Kim and

+STRATEGIZING IN/FOR/BY DESIGN: A PRAG-MATIC VIEW

38

Chung (2007), there is a «tendency to emphasize the importance of strategy in design management as a way of improving design’s contributions» (p. 45). Clearly, there has been a pronounced change in the literature from product-centred to strategy-centred discourses.

This advancement in the strategic standing of design has been tied to the debated rise of «design thinking», in conjunction with the growing inf luence of international design consultancies (e.g. IDEO, frog, Continuum), which have stepped into the realm of strategy consulting, adopting more creative roles in the formulation of strategy for corporate clients, including «strategy visualizers», «core competency prospectors» (Seidel, 2000), and incorporating user knowledge and design research methods to enhance strategic decision-making (Chatpar, 2007).

However, most research linking design and strategy adheres to orthodox views in strategic management, locking design into positivistic descriptions and lacking a critical perspective. Hence, the current strategic elevation of design demands serious attention. Previous studies have failed to provide a richly textured account of the interrelation and interdependence between strategizing and designing, and the politics associated with this relationship in the organizational context. Therefore, the intent of this research work is to provide this missing perspective, seeking to avoid taking for granted conventional wisdoms. Instead of assuming that design strategy is a «thing» and exploring it based on a straightforward conceptual definition, this study stands for a broader conceptualization of what design

strategy could be.

This study will explore the emergence of design strategy at Volvo Product Design by looking at the field of practices through a pragmatist lens. This study presupposes that strategy does not exist independently of a set of practices. Hence, the object strategy is not the starting point of this inquiry, but rather the practices that unfold in the organizational context, which are associated with this word. Strategy as an object of analysis can only be explained by what went into its making (Carter, Clegg & Kornberger, 2009). Such conceptualization moves strategy making closer to organizing. Furthermore, a focus on practices brings to the centre of the stage human activities and socio-material interactions that, while often invisible to traditional strategy research, can have significant consequences for organizations and the people who work in them (Johnson, Melin & Whittington, 2003). Indeed, understanding «practice» through the lens of pragmatist philosophy, offers a theoretical framework for practice that is dynamic, emergent and socially agentic, bringing together the habitual and creative aspects of practice (Simpson, 2009), and encompassing the aesthetic and experiential dimension of designing and strategizing.

Also, this study takes into account the highly politicized nature of the field of strategy in which power is an underpinning component. Strategy is a political mechanism to change the state of affairs by structuring conversations and calculations about the future (Kornberger, 2013). As designers step into strategic conversations, providing their vision, power struggles cannot be avoided.

RESEARCH QUESTIONHow does design strategy emerge? What are the implications for the organization?

RESEARCH METHOD AND NEXT STEPSThis research project is a monograph thesis. Since the emphasis of the study is on practices and experience, a qualitative approach has been chosen. A researcher adopting a pragmatist perspective is expected to interact with the world as he has an active role in the constitution of reality. The notion of the detached and inert observer is negated. Thus, a researcher’s personal experiences and insights are central to meaning-making processes in the social setting of research. Also, a pragmatic stance is concerned with «how» practice emerges in real-time rather than «what» practices are in use (Simpson, 2009).

A focus on practice necessitates appropriate methods to unpack meanings and the experiential dimension of social activity. Therefore, I have taken up a pragmatic ethnographic approach for this study. Ethnography is rooted in the interpretive tradition, and was developed within the field of anthropology in order to see the world through the eyes of natives. Ethnography is not a method in itself but an approach to writing about and analysing social life, which draws from a range of various research methods such as observation, interviews, text analysis, diary studies, visual methods (Watson, 2011). It is characterized by a concern of finding out «how things work». Ethnographers aim to capture thoughts, beliefs, values, and motivations of people in organizations, by immersing in the context, seeking also to understand

39

how these values and beliefs relate to action and how such agency shapes organizational practices (Llewelyn, 2003).

As an interpretive method, ethnography opposes the pragmatist position of non-dualisms of subject-object adopted for this study. What is more the experimental nature espoused in pragmatist thought are not compatible with the traditional ethnographic task of simply watching and talking to people in order to interpret the meanings they attribute to their situation. Research, in a pragmatic sense, is rather concerned with practical action and engagement in a co-constituting meaning-making process with other actors. So a «pragmatic

ethnographic approach» might sound like an oxymoron. However, many contemporary ethnographers have advocated for a «first-hand» understanding of the world by fostering participation in the research setting (Silverman, 2006), joining the pragmatist belief that we cannot study the world without being part of it. Moreover, some critical ethnographers have promoted an alternative project calling for the restoration of the epistemological and methodological connection between empiricism and experience, which resonates with pragmatist ideals (e.g. Jackson, 1989). This position rejects the subject-object duality of traditional ethnography. Therefore, my data collection, data analysis and writing will be guided by these methodological principles.

In the short term, I will continue exploring the practices of the HMI-UX design team as they work on the anchoring phase of a new integrated HMI/UX/service design strategy, currently in emergence at Volvo Product Design.

KEY EFERENCESCarter, C., Clegg, S. and Kornberger, M. (2009). A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about Studying Strategy. London: Sage.Chhatpar, R. (2007). Analytic enhancements to strategic decision-making from the designer’s toolbox. Design Management Review, 18(1), 28-35Erichsen, P. G. and Christensen, P. R. (2013). The evolution of the design management field: a journal perspective. Creativity and Innovation Management., 22(2), 107-120Jackson, M. (1989). Paths toward a clearing: Radical empiricism and ethnographic inquiry. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Johnson, G., Melin, L. and Whittington, R. (2003). Micro strategy and strategizing: towards an activity-based view. Journal of Management Studies, 40(1), 3-22.Kim, Y. J. and Chung, K. W. (2007). Tracking Major Trends in Design

Management Studies. Design Management Review, 18(3), 42-48.Kornberger, M. (2013). Disciplining the future: on studying the politics of strategy. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 29(1), 104-107Llewelyn, S. (2003). What counts as «theory» in qualitative management and accounting research? Introducing five levels of theorizing. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 16(4), 662-708Seidel, V. (2000). Moving from Design to Strategy: The Four Roles of Design-Led Strategy Consulting. Design Management Journal, 11(2), 73-79.Silverman, D. (2006). Interpreting qualitative data: methods for analysing talk, text and interaction. 3rd edition. London: Sage. Simpson, B. (2009). Pragmatism, Mead and the Practice Turn. Organization Studies. 30(12), 1329-1347Stigliani, I. and Ravasi, D. (2012). Product Design: a review and research agenda for management studies. International Journal of Management Reviews, 14(4), 464-488Watson, T. J. (2011). Ethnography, Reality, and Truth: The Vital Need for Studies of «How Things Work» in Organizations and Management. Journal of Management Studies, 48(1), 202- 217.Buchanan, R. (1985). Declaration by design: rhetoric, argument, and demonstration in design practice. Design Issues, 2(1), 4-22James, W. (1912). Essays in Radical Empiricism. New York: Longmans, Green & CoJohnson, G., Langley, A., Melin, L., and Whittington, R. (2007). Strategy as Practice: Research Directions and Resources. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University PressWhittington, R. (2004). Strategy after modernism: recovering practice. European Management Review, 1(1), 62-68.

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Design-driven professional, passionate about design and hi-tech products, Marta has over 10+ years of international professional experience in SME’s and multinationals (Philips) as design responsible, project manager and product marketing manager. Involved in many international architectural and development projects (for Foster and Partners, Zaha Hadid Architetcs, OMA, Arup, Banco Santander, Grupo Once, several municipalities and other public and private entities) she has a sound knowledge of design management, product design, LED lighting, customization, and solid project management competencies, particularly in projects with a strong creative driver and highly innovative and technological requirements.Currently Executive PhD candidate at the department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering (Politecnico di Milano), Marta holds a degree in Engineering in Industrial Design (Valladolid University) and a postgraduate MA Design Management (Staffordshire University).Her research interests refer

M A R T A M O R I L L Oto the role of design and technology in radical innovation (design-driven innovation, radical innovation, innovation management, design management, technology management, project portfolio strategy, open innovation) and the impact of innovation on businesses and firm’s governance models. As a DESMA research fellow, Marta currently works for the Italian furniture manufacturer Cassina (Poltrona Frau Group). Her research focuses on the dynamics between technology and meanings in radical innovation

– including the analysis of how technology is influencing new lifestyles, domestic contexts and product languages, the valuation of technology’s potentiality for businesses in the creation of new scenarios and product systems, and its implications in organization’s strategies.Working with an industrial partner she also expects to find an intersection between academic and practitioner approaches, bringing quantitative and empirical analysis to design management and innovation research.

marta@desmanetwork.eu

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My research project focuses on radical innovation of technology and meanings. More precisely the investigation will deepen in the interplay between these two dimensions of innovation, analysing the dynamics between technology and meanings and evaluating the impact that the exploration of radical innovations has in the way corporations plan, organize and manage innovation.

The main objectives of the study are:• To investigate the dynamics between technology and meanings in envisioning radically new scenarios. Analyse how technologies are impacting socio-cultural changes and disclose potential (and unexplored) opportunities of technology in the radical innovation of meanings.

• To understand the practical impact of exploring radical innovations on firm’s governance practises, analysing the way that pursuing radical projects affects f irm’s strategy and operations (product strategy, project portfolio, innovation management, resource or budget allocation) and ultimately create a model that help firms to integrate exploration of radical innovations in their daily core-businesses.

Main related fields: Innovation Management, Radical Innovation, Design Management, Technology Management, Disruptive Innovation, Sense making.

BACKGROUND AND THEORETICAL POSITIONINGSome companies focus on an incremental approach to innovation, while other firms seek for radical innovations. Highly reputed scholars suggest that radical innovation is a core source for sustained competitive advantage and the achievement of long-term innovation success (Christensen, 1997; Verganti, 2009; Garcia and Calantone, 2002; von Stamm, 2003). While conventional view of radical innovation mostly takes the lens of technology, there is a consensus among scholars on the idea that a novel technology may not suffice to radically innovate, highlighting the importance of exploring new dimensions and drivers of innovation searching for new applications and interpretations for novel technological discoveries and overcoming the barrier of the «dominant design paradigm» in order to successfully exploit

+INTERSECTIONS IN RADICAL INNOVATION

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technologies and envision possible future scenarios (Christensen, 1997; Twiss, 1982; Kim and Mauborgne, 2005; Dosi, 1982; Verganti, 2009; Teece, 1986; Kim and Mauborgne, 2004 and 2005; McGrath and MacMillan, 2009; Turner and Topalian, 2002). Consequently, exploring the dynamics of technologies and meanings in radical innovation and understanding how firms access and combine these heterogeneous sources is critical for the management of innovation.

In parallel, during the past decades, the increasingly relevance of design to innovation has been recognized by scholars and practitioners (Verganti, 2009, Brown 2008; Von Stamm, 2003; Tether, 2005; Lockwood, 2010). The strategic use of design has demonstrated a significant impact to innovation excellence and businesses growth (Design Council, 2007; Petersen, 2011; Tischler, 2011; Design Council, 2005:18; Kootstra, 2009; Verganti, 2009). In this framework, Design-driven innovation literature (Verganti, 2009) proposes «meanings» as an essential element for innovation. This emergent theory addresses the emotional and sociocultural connection to people’s values rather than focusing on the traditional perspective of satisfying the operative needs of customers (Dell’Era and Verganti, 2007).

Radical innovation of meanings brings a completely new perspective to the field of innovation management, where the emotional, sociocultural, and interpretative dimensions of how people give value to products have been largely ignored, on favour of features, performance and technological value of products. The theory relies on the success of design-intense firms (the case of the industrial partner for this research

project: Cassina. Poltrona Frau Group) in proposing radical changes in socio-cultural models by creating products that change the way people see and value things.

RESEARCH QUESTIONAlthough the idea of radical innovation as a co-existence of technology and «something else» has been present in literature as earlier discussed, it is the interpretative dimension proposed by design-driven innovation which renders innovation in meanings particularly relevant to the study of radical innovations. Technology epiphany seen as an intersection between technology and design, could thus be considered as the ultimate degree of radical innovation (see Figure 1). Exploring how companies approach radical innovation driven by technology+meanings may bring new insights to the field, disclose potential opportunities to further pursue unexplored paths to innovation, and ultimately help to formalise methods and processes in which companies may introduce radical innovation on technology+meanings and integrate it within a downstream portfolio.

Possible research question #1: What are the dynamics between Technology and Meanings in Radical Innovation, and how pursuing different approaches to technology+meanings innovation affect the process and outcome of innovation?

Possible research question #2: How can firms organize for the exploration (and later exploitation) of radical projects and how is this impacting their governance models and practises? How do they develop a balanced portfolio of projects that include exploration of radical innovation?

Figure 1. Design Driven Innovation. Source: Verganti (2009)

RESEARCH METHOD AND NEXT STEPSThe investigation is conducted at Cassina (DesMa’s industrial partner for this project), and for the time being, is planed as several case studies. I have been actively involved as a Project Manager in our UNIVERSE project (http://www.carloratti.com/cassina-our-universe/), where I could analyse a contemporary phenomenon (an on-going project) which suits with the case study method (Yin, 2009). The project has been the main source of empirical data during the first months of investigation. Main insights relate to the co-creation process between the firm and an unusual «outsider partner» [carlorattiassociati], in a project that ref lects on how future scenarios of living may be inf luenced by the technological era we are living.Other design case studies of more incremental scope are being analysed through last months. The level of involvement in these projects is lower, and I am acting mainly as an observant. These cases serve as to confront the insights and findings from data collected through the main case study with other projects within

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the company, in order to identify and understand the differences that different project (and partner) typologies have on how companies manage innovation. The results are being triangulated with theory.So far empirical findings suggest important considerations with regards to the way innovation is managed at micro level (current unit of analysis: project) depending on the nature of scope of the project. Differences between «more traditional» design projects and explorative projects with high involvement of technology (main case) have an impact on how firm define strategic scope, plans project, select partners, manages resources/time/risk, or moves the ideas generated to further development and commercialization phases. Key implications are related to project governance (micro-level), transactional and relational mechanisms, and the role that firm and partner play from a collaborative innovation perspective (network of interpreters model). More over, the study revealed the problematic impact that explorative projects have on strategy, and the firm itself, suggesting that organizations need to adopt alternative project competences and governance practices towards innovation.

At the moment, two directions are under consideration:

- Stay at project level and analyse the different themes revealing a need for different approaches to innovation depending on project typology

- Move the research to a macro-level in order to evaluate how organization can deal with hybrid (radical and incremental) innovation approaches

KEY REFERENCESBessant, J., (2008). Dealing with discontinuous innovation: the European experience. Int. J. Technology Management, 42, pp.36-50.Christensen, Clayton M. (1997). The Innovator’s Dilemma. When New Technologies Cause great Firms to fail. Harvard Business School Press. US.Dell'Era, Claudio; Verganti, Roberto. (2007). «Strategies of Innovation and Imitation of Product Languages». Journal of Product Innovation Management; Nov2007, Vol. 24 Issue 6, p580-599.Donald A. Norman, and Roberto Verganti. «Incremental and Radical Innovation: Design Research versus Technology and Meaning Change», submitted to Design IssuesDosi, Giovanni (1982). Technologcal Paradigms and Technological Trajectories. Research policy 11, pp. 147- 162Garcia, Calantone (2002). «A critical look at technological innovation typology and innovativeness terminology a literature review». The Journal of Product Innovation Management 19, 110-132.Klotler, Philip and Keller, Kevin Lan (1997). Marketing Management. 13th ed. New Jersey, Pearson Prentice Hall.Kootstra, Gert L. (2009). «The Incorporation of Design Management in Todayʼs Business Practices». DME Survey. The Hague and INHOLLAND University. Rotterdam.Teece, D. J. (1986). Profiting from technological innovation: Implications for integration, collaboration, licensing and public policy. Research Policy, 15(6), pp. 285-305.Veryzer Jr., R .W. (1998). Discontinuous Innovation and the New Product Development Process. Journal of Product Innovation Management 15(4):304-21.Verganti, Roberto (2009). Design-Driven Innovation. Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean. Harvard Business Publishing Corporation. US.Verganti, R. & Öberg, Å. (2012). Interpreting and envisioning. A hermeneutic framework to look at radical innovation of meanings. Industrial Marketing Management, pp. 1-10.Von Stamm, Bettina (2003). Managing Innovation, Design and Creativity. 2nd Ed. UK, John Wiley & Sons Ltd.Yin, Robert K. (2003) Case Study Research. 4th Ed. Sage. ISBN 978-1-4129-6099-1

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Lien’s academic background is in business engineering. She holds a bachelor and a master degree from the University of Ghent in Belgium. Her DESMA position is at Imperial College London where she is part of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship group within the business school. She tends to focus more on the management side within the DESMA frame, taking organizational and business model design as a starting point. By doing so, she hopes to contribute to the attempt to bring the disciplines of design and management closer together.

More specifically, her research interests centre on the implications of competing objectives for the design of

L I E N D E C U Y P E R

the organization. Furthermore, she is interested in social and environmental innovation and the ventures that are set up around these kinds of innovation. In the context of the DESMA research project, she looks at the different dimensions in which tensions following from having competing objectives come to the surface. She is particularly interested in how social ventures design their organization in order to cope with both economic and social objectives. Her research question is as follows: «How do social enterprises design the organization in order to deal with the social-business tension?»She will use a qualitative research method and conduct case study analysis to understand the underlying dynamics of the organizational design in the context of social entrepreneurship.

lien@desmanetwork.eu

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The social enterprise sector is thriving in the UK and elsewhere. Unified by the premise that they can change the world by changing the way they do business, a lot of entrepreneurs now choose to set up social enterprises. The increasing popularity of social enterprises has sparked the interest among academics. Social enterprises are organizations using business principles to tackle social and environmental issues. In doing so, these ventures combine principles, practices and values from the for-profit and non-profit sector in an unprecedented way. The social or environmental mission is an explicit and most often primary objective, and this is what sets these ventures apart from commercial businesses. A characteristic element is thus that social enterprises have multiple objectives to achieve: financial success and social impact. Their commitment to multiple objectives juxtaposes divergent cultures, activities, performance criteria, logics and values within the organization. As a consequence of the simultaneous pursuit of economic and social value creation, social-business tensions might emerge on different levels within the organization.

Although research on social enterprises is sprouting, it is still a nascent field of inquiry, with many issues unaddressed by scholars. Despite the fact that many academics have recognized the difficulties of managing social-business tensions, little is known about the organizational and managerial responses to these tensions. As social enterprises are quite a recent phenomenon, there is no ready-to-wear standard model or design for these organizations yet. The goal of my research is to gain more insight in the organization design of these enterprises. The design of an organization is a holistic concept and consists of the structures, practices and processes the organization implements.

+DOING GOOD WHILE MAKING PROFIT

Using an inductive research design, I will look into the ways social enterprises are designed to respond to both organizational objectives. Gaining more insight in the way social enterprises deal with social-business tensions will enhance our understanding of the field. Research on social enterprises can also inform existing theories, by drawing inferences from it about the management of organizational tensions in general. In addition, a better understanding of the new design configurations that organizations implement in a complex environment (such as social enterprises), can also contribute to organization design theory.

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BACKGROUND AND THEORETICAL POSITIONINGDespite increased interest among practitioners and scholars, the field of social entrepreneurship remains to be an under theorized area of academic research. Both scholars and practitioners are far from reaching consensus on what social entrepreneurship and social enterprises actually mean. I will hold on to the definition as proposed by Mair and Marti (2006) of «social entrepreneurship as a process involving the innovative use and combination of resources to pursue opportunities to catalyse social change and address social needs.» Social entrepreneurship can refer to the offering of products and services, but also to the creation of a new organization. It is the organizational context in which social entrepreneurship takes place that distinguishes it from more loosely structured initiatives such as social movements (Mair and Marti, 2006).

It is important to clarify the conceptual differences between definitions of social entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurs and social enterprises. Definitions of social entrepreneurship focus on the process or the behaviour, while definitions of social entrepreneurs refer to the founder of the initiative. Social enterprise definitions refer to the tangible outcome of social entrepreneurship (Mair and Marti, 2006).

Social enterprises leverage economic activity to pursue a social goal (Mair, Battilana and Cardenas, 2012). The increased importance of the third sector, budgetary pressures on the public sector and a broad interest in non-conventional entrepreneurial ways to tackle current societal challenges has led to the increasing popularity of «social enterprises» (Defourny and Nyssens, 2006). Social enterprises combine for profit and non-profit activities and happen on the crossroads of the private and the public sector. Social enterprises are organizations where the social and/or environmental mission is an explicit, and most often primary, objective. Social enterprises are hybrid organizations since they respond to customer needs, increase revenue and operational efficiency, while simultaneously maximizing their social impact by attending to beneficiary needs.

Past ResearchSocial enterprises face many challenges due to their dual objectives and hybrid nature. Most literature so far has focused on describing the distinctive characteristics of hybrid organizations and the challenges that follow from their specific nature. One specific challenge follows from the fact that social enterprises try to be financially self-sustainable while also delivering social value. Having dual objectives imposes multiple and possibly conf licting demands on the organization. Commitment to economic and social value creation juxtaposes divergent cultures, practices, activities, values and logics in the venture. Smith et al. (2013) identify four dimensions in which social-business tensions emerge: (1) performing, (2) belonging, (3) organizing and (4) learning.

PerformingPerforming tensions emerge from the divergent outcomes and goals social enterprises seek to achieve. Both social and business metrics involve a different time dimension since achieving social impact usually takes more

time than reaching a state of financial stability. This timing mismatch potentially leads to tension inside the organization.

BelongingBelonging tensions relate to questions of identity. Pursuing a social and economic mission potentially creates confusion about what the organization is and does. Leaders struggle to explicitly state «who we are» and «what we do» (Smith et al., 2013). Organizational identity questions arise internally and externally, both individually and collectively.

OrganizingOrganizing tensions follow from contradictory cultures, practices, processes and structures. A social enterprise involves a socially oriented culture and a business-oriented culture. Hybrid organizations face a challenge of establishing an organizational culture that reconciles both a social mission and effective operations. Another issue is the organizational structure hybrid organizations implement to deliver both economic and social value. So far, there has been little investigation into the question of whether social enterprises create either separate structures and activities, or one single integrated structure (Smith et al., 2013).

LearningLearning tensions relate to difficulties that arise when hybrid organizations evolve over time and seek to grow and expand. Many scholars have also pointed at the danger of mission drift in the evolution of a social enterprise. Mission drift occurs when over time the enterprise prioritizes profit making over the social mission, or the other way around (Mair et al., 2012). Some researchers are sceptical about the sustainability (Battilana and

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Dorado, 2012) and scalability (Haigh and Hoffman, 2012) of a hybrid model and argue that future research should look at the organizational factors and hybrid models that prevent social enterprises from mission drift (Mair et al., 2012; Battilana and Dorado, 2012).

Despite the acknowledgment of the many difficulties hybrids face, we still know little about the organizational and managerial responses to these challenges.

RESEARCH QUESTIONSeveral authors have suggested looking more into the organizational structures, designs, and organizational models that enable social enterprises to reconcile both objectives as an avenue for future research. A successful reconciliation of the economic and social activities will depend on how well the organizational structure and design is suited to host this. My research question is as follows:«How do social enterprises design the organization in order to deal with the social-business tension?»I will use organization design as a unit of analysis to gain insight in the way in which hybrid organizations reconcile conf licting demands and deal with the tensions following from it. Organization design is broader than organization structure and consists of the «structures, processes and practices» organizations implement. Organization design is a broadly defined concept without a clear delineation of what it precisely encompasses.

RESEARCH METHOD AND NEXT STEPSI will use an inductive and qualitative research design, based on a multiple case-study. There are two reasons for this choice of research design.

First, the fact that there is little theoretical insight so far in the organizational design that social enterprises implement to deal with the social-business tension makes it difficult to derive theoretical propositions about this and to subsequently test them. In addition, organization design is a broadly defined concept. As stated by organization design scholars, it is difficult to derive theoretical models for an organization’s design upfront, especially in a context of multiple demands and goals. Rather than testing theoretical propositions and design models, I will inductively derive several relevant dimensions of organization design. Therefore, I will start by inductively deriving dimensions of organization design that make sense in the context of social enterprises. I will do this on the basis of secondary data I have about 15 cases of social enterprises. As a second step, I plan to gather extra data about the evolution of the cases over time, and look which design components enable them to sustain their hybridity over time. The key idea is to look at how and why social businesses design their organizations in certain ways.

KEY REFERENCESDacin, M. T., Dacin, P. A., & Tracey, P. (2011). Social Entrepreneurship: A critique and future directions. Organization Science. 22(5) 1203-1213.Dacin, P. A., Dacin, M. T., & Matear, M. (2010). Social entrepreneurship: why we do not need a new theory and how we move forward from here. Academy of management perspectives, 24 (3): 37-57Defourny, J. & Nyssens, M. (2010). Conceptions of social enterprise and social entrepreneurship in Europe and the United States: Convergences and divergences. Journal of social entrepreneurship, 1(1); 32-53Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). Building theories from case-study research. Academy of Management Review. 14(4) 532-550Greenwood, R., Raynard, M., Kodeih, F., Micelotta, E. R., & Lounsbury, M. (2011) Institutional complexity and organizational responses. Academy of Management, 5 (1) pp. 317-371Haigh, N., & Hoffman, A. J. (2012). Hybrid organizations: The next chapter of sustainable business. Organizational Dynamics, 41(2): 126-134.Hoffman A. J., Badiane K. K. and Haigh N. (2010). Hybrid organizations as agents for positive social change: Bridging the for-profit and non-profit divide. Ross School of Business Paper Ann Arbor, MI: University of MichiganMair, J. & Marti, I. (2006). Social entrepreneurship research: A source of explanation, prediction, and delight. Journal of world business, 41 (1): 36-44Mair, J., Battilana, J., & Cardenas, J. (2012). Organizing for society: A typology of social entrepreneuring models. Journal of Business Ethics. 111:353-373Short, J. C., Moss, T. W., & Lumpkin, G. T. (2009). Research in social entrepreneurship: Past contributions and future opportunities. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, 3: 161-196Smith, W. K., Gonin, M., & Besharov, M. L. (2013). Managing social-business tensions: a review and research agenda for social enterprise. Business Ethics QuarterlyVan De Ven, A. H., Ganco, M. & Hinings, C. R. (2013). Returning to the Frontier of Contingency Theory of Organizational and Institutional Designs. The academy of management annals, 7(1)

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Ariana is a researcher at the Business and Design Lab at Gothenburg University. She was born in Mississippi and holds a Master of architecture and Master of environmental design, and has worked professionally as an architect in NYC. She is interested in exploring design in different forms /contexts and the intersection between design, aesthetics, and organizing.

A R I A N A A M A C K E R

ariana@desmanetwork.eu

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When we do things we use different kinds of knowledge. Two major distinctions of knowledge are explicit knowledge – the writing and reading about things – and implicit knowledge

– he silent knowledge of how to do things. Most of our understanding about knowledge is of the first type because it is easily explainable and talked about. It can be captured by qualities we easily see and have words for. The focus of my research is on the second type of knowledge, implicit knowledge, because this is arguably the type of knowledge used primarily in design, and likewise, in artistic creativity. But this has been a paradox for research about design precisely because it cannot be explained in the traditional sense of «talking about what we know». How

+EXPLORING DESIGN AS ARTISTIC PRACTICE

do we say what design is? It is a skill you learn and that becomes intuitive after experience, not reading, the way that you learn to ride a bike by riding it not by reading instructions.

So is it really possible to explain what design is, or how to do it, or is it something that has to be learned? If it is fundamentally unspeakable, which some theories of knowledge say it is, then we cannot ever find a way to say what it is in the traditional way that we understand knowledge. It would be like asking the metaphorical question, how do you describe silence? This has also been a problem of art pointed out when Duchamp placed a urinal in a museum posing the thought, «what is art?» Thus, accepting that I will not be able to explain design through words or with instructions, I aim to show design in an artistic way rather than a scientific way. It is my demonstration of the experience of riding a bike. Artistic practices, like dance, are practices through which I will try to convey what we do in design, not by talking about it, but by the experience of it. In a sense, it will not be a recipe for design, but a more elaborate you-tube clip of my version of cooking design.

50BACKGROUND AND THEORETICAL POSITIONINGToday professional design is working in an expanding context of practice and design is increasingly seen as a creative enabler for innovation both in organizations and society. For design research and practice, this complexity has been met with a growing pressure to understand what constitutes designers’ activities and knowledge if not to also to distinguish what is creative or innovative about it. And with the relatively recent emergence of management concepts like «design thinking» (e.g., Brown, 2008; Martin, 2009) and «design-driven innovation» (Verganti, 2009) there is increased research and empirical studies on the intersection of design and innovation in organizational settings.

Thus, design research, inf luenced primarily by the areas of science and cultural studies, is increasingly exemplified by a higher degree of ref lection on its research methods and cognitive processes. But there is a contradiction here when design is being sought as a creative approach for innovation. Although design is associated with creative arts, design research studying design has tended to favour more traditional qualitative research approaches by trying to account for what design knowledge entails. However, interpretive descriptions of design practice have limitations when it comes to conceptualizing and representing design knowledge and they tend to fall into an «essentialist trap» (Johansson-Sköldberg, Woodilla, & Çetinkaya, 2013) of trying to pick out something unique about design as a competence or way of knowing. One main difficulty with this approach is that the embodied knowledge that characterizes design is thought to be irreducible to representations including language (Duguid, 2005) Implicit in this embodied knowledge,

as more in depth studies on design practice recognize (e.g., (Carlgren, 2013; Jahnke, 2013), are artistic and aesthetic dimensions that are suggested as a critical characteristic of design creativity (Tonkinwise, 2011). Yet, it remains that the role of aesthetics in designing is little studied or theorized. It is important to ask if there is something being missed specifically about this artistic side of design.

This omission of aesthetic and artistic dimensions of design knowledge is the focus of my research. To better understand artistic creativity and aesthetics, the pragmatist philosophical stance has been identified as a theoretical position that challenges representational thinking and helps surpass the perceived separation of thought and action of traditional research approaches (Rylander, 2010). The pragmatic approach matches the artistic and experimental nature of design because it involves in bringing about new situations and thus new concepts. A profound implication of pragmatist philosophy is, given the primacy of experience, that meaning resides primarily in direct encounters or experience, not in mediated abstractions (Johnson, 2007; Shusterman, 2000). A semantic conception of design is that it conveys meanings through symbols (e.g., Krippendorff, 1989), but the pragmatist focus on experience supports that design uses abstract qualities of experience to express feelings or concepts, not linguistic meanings. For example, in architectural design, we use qualities of heaviness, materiality, light, and enclosure to signify the feeling of monumentality or stability. Therefore, rather than first starting with the symbolism of a monument, or what

the monument means, we start with the experiential qualities a monument should convey. Building types, like «banks» for instance, have developed a monumental style over time because of the expression of these monumental qualities, not necessarily by the symbolism of looking like «bank». This means that any attempt to find meaning in symbols or categories is relative because the meaning that we give them is done by expressing relationships of experiences in order to give them significance in our lives (Dewey, 1997/1910). This is critical for perceiving meaning in the context of innovation. This is not about what design is, but how design makes those relationships (Dewey, 1997/1910) since this is what design can empirically accomplish. Because aesthetic knowledge is arguably part of this sense making of bringing new ideas into being, it is not necessarily articulable or consciously accessible (James, 2000/1904). Thus, my view of this research is that design must be qualitatively explored and constructed through artistic experience.

RESEARCH QUESTIONHow can an artistic research approach with methods like movement contribute to more understanding of the role of aesthetics in design?

RESEARCH METHOD AND NEXT STEPSI aim to contribute to the understanding of designer’s embodied knowledge with respect to aesthetic dimensions. Rather than trying to describe what design consists of and articulating it, my intent is to consider the actual means of obtaining it and conveying it. Therefore, the argument with the pragmatic approach for my work is that my experience is a source of embodied knowledge for my research, and I will empirically study design through my experience

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of artistic practice. I intend to do this as a concrete application of John Dewey’s concept of aesthetic experience to consider implications of the concept for design knowledge.

In particular, I will explore the potential of movement studies as a design method to specifically focus on experiential qualities of design aesthetics. Movement choreography is a methodological approach of learning to conceptualize and abstract experience through the body. It has been chosen as a way to directly «tap into» embodied knowledge since it offers a way for me, as a design researcher, to think through the experiences of the «now» in order to close the distance between my design actions and its representations. Design fields like architecture have criticized dominance of visual representation techniques (e.g., drawing, sketching, photography, digital modelling, collage, photography) in their practice and have supported movement methods as a way to consider first-hand encounters of design (Bronet & Schumacher, 1999). It has been used as a teaching method to heighten students’ intuitive, emotional reactions and their multi-sensory awareness, and in turn, it has been shown that students ref lection on those experiences encourages thinking differently about them and has provided them with new approaches to abstract and represent their understanding (e.g., Sara & Sara, 2006).

With this under consideration, I will develop design workshops where I with others explore spaces and situations through movement, ref lect on the experience, and experiment on concepts that come out of such ref lections. In doing this I suggest that the present is a place

to find more textures in and open up our behaviour and interactions to new interpretations. By not only using the design imagery of «futures», there is the potential for newness in the unseen here and now. I will also experiment with documentation through video, photography, sound recordings, and note taking.

KEY REFERENCESBronet, F., & Schumacher, J. (1999). Design in movement: the prospects of interdisciplinary design. Journal of Architectural Education, 97-109. Brown, T. (2008). Design thinking. Harvard Business Review, 86(6), 84-92. Carlgren, L. (2013). Design thinking as an enabler of innovation: exploring the concept and its relation to building innovation capabilities. Gothenburg, SE: Chalmers University of Technology.Dewey, J. (1997/1910). How we think. Boston, MA: D. C. Heath & co.Duguid, P. (2005). The art of knowing: social and tacit dimensions of knowledge and the limits of community practice. The Information Society: An International Journal, 21(2), 109-118. Jahnke, M. (2013). Meaning in the making: Introducing a hermeneutic perspective on the contribution of design practice to innovation. Gothenburg, SE: Art Monitor.James, W. (2000/1904). A world of pure experience William James: Pragmatism and other writings. New York, NY: Penguin Group.Johansson-Sköldberg, U., Woodilla, J., & Çetinkaya, M. (2013). Design Thinking: Past, Present and Possible Futures. Creativity and Innovation Management, 22(2), 121-146. doi: 10.1111/caim.12023Johnson, M. (2007). The meaning of the body: aesthetics of human understanding. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.Krippendorff, K. (1989). On the essential contexts of artifact or on the proposition that «design is making sense (of things)». Design Issues, 5(2), 9-39. Martin, R. (2009). The design of business: Why design thinking is the next competitive advantage. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Press.Rylander, A. (2010). Unpacking the magic of design: design-driven innovation as aesthetic experience. Paper presented at the 26th EGOS Colloquium Lisbon, Portugal. Sara, R., & Sara, A. (2006). Between the lines: experiencing space through dance. CEBE Transactions, 3(1), 95-105. Shusterman, R. (2000). Pragmatist aesthetics: living beauty, rethinking art: Rowman and Littlefield.Tonkinwise, C. (2011). A taste for practices: unrepressing style in design thinking. Design Studies, 32(5), 533-545. Verganti, R. (2009). Design-driven innovation: Changing the rules of competition by radically innovating what things mean. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business Press.

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Sara Jane originally is from Colombia where she developed

studies in Industrial Design at Icesi University in Cali,

Colombia. She has received a Master in Business Design from

Domus Academy, Milan, Italy. Sara Jane started to work as product and graphic designer

in a design studio, and she also had the opportunity to develop

some projects for an advertising company. Moving to retail, she had the experience to work in

visual merchandising and retail design for several fashion brands.

Her last work experience before she joined DESMA was in Mexico

working as Brand Manager, responsible for marketing,

business model and market research.

From her early studies, attending a school with a focus on business,

she started to feel curious about the intersection between

design and management. Sara Jane believes that design is very important in the development of strategies and business. Finally

she also likes to be informed about trends and how design

influence people lives.

S A R A J A N E G O N Z A L E Z

sara@desmanetwork.eu

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S A R A J A N E G O N Z A L E Z

The starting point of my research project is the idea of people as source of innovation. I am working in understanding what methods companies use to study and interpret user needs, aspirations, and behaviours in order to translate them into products and services and produce innovation. Main challenge in my research project is to explore the changing role of users, from merely passive receptors, to active stakeholders who participate in collaborative design processes with companies where they make relevant contributions.

The importance of users has been recognized for several scholars who developed research to explore what is the role of users from technological and research-led approaches. Also in recent years some companies have placed the user at the centre of their process, recognizing the value of user’s contributions and the potential on developing collaborative projects. I will focus on understanding how design methods can facilitate the process of analysis and interpretation of consumers, creating some common

+UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF USERS IN INNO-VATION PROCESS

ground between designers and managers in how they tap the user knowledge to produce innovation. When I refer to innovation I am considering novel ideas in product, services or experiences that represent an improvement in the market (Radical innovation, Garcia and Calantone, 2002; Verganti, 2009; Sandberg, 2011), ideas that result as part of the paradigm of open innovation where firms use external ideas also from consumers. While referring to users I am taking in consideration not only individuals, but also organizations (companies) that externally collaborate in the innovation process of an organization.

I am developing my research project in Future Concept Lab. Italian consultancy partner. Specialized in observation of human behaviour, FCL supports strategic consulting for innovation. Being in FCL I have the opportunity to explore different research methodologies and theory in consumer studies. And I have been also involved in projects where FCL identify the most important phenomena in people’s daily life, for defining trends in aesthetics, retail, consumption and communication. I am following an exploratory research approach for a better understanding of the context and the relationship with my topic, identifying key issues while designing my research.

Both my professional and academic experiences have led me to environments where design and management converge, where from a design perspective users are important to define form and function, a specific service or interaction, and from a business perspective the needs and desires of consumers are studied to planning and develop communication, marketing and branding strategies. Regardless what is the final output of these processes, what has become common is the importance of the human dimension (people are inf luencing different business sectors through their behaviours) and how people voice is heard and taken in consideration in both design process and innovation management. For this reason I feel there is

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a space for explore how connect both Design + Management from the user perspective, and also how design can facilitate experimentation of different methodologies within a professional environment.

BACKGROUND AND THEORETICAL POSITIONINGMy research project is focus on user innovation and the involvement of user in processes while developing innovation. There has been an evolution in how users are involved in these processes considering the shift from a function-focus (technology oriented) in design, to a market-focus (business, marketing and service oriented) to a more recent human-focus (people, users and social innovation). The different methods that companies applied to give users a more active and direct role in design processes could be addressed to discover acknowledge and unacknowledged needs (problem definition), and in some cases to work directly in a solution (problem-solving). The aim of my research project is to understand how users participate in design process to produce radical innovation.

Last years have been several design and managers scholars trying also to understand what is the role of users in design and their potential contribution to innovation. Focus on people has been represented in many ways, from ergonomics, human computer interaction, interaction design, to participatory design, and other technology-led and research-led approaches.

The importance of study people was first introduced to design where ergonomics emerged as a scientific discipline and Human Factors Engineering (HFE) was introduced in post-war America, largely through practitioners like Henry Dreyfuss and Alvin Telley (1959) (Flinchum, 1997). During the 19970’s Participatory design had an important role, due to the Scandinavian system development and was the first approach that attempts to actively involve the people who are being served through design in the process to help ensure that the designed product/service meets their need (Sanders, 2006). People who will become «users» are considered as «the ones with the most knowledge about what they want and what they need». (Czyzewski, et al., 1990; Schuler, et al., 1993) Late 1980’s where Don Norman introduced User-centred design (UCD) in the academic field in his book The Design of Everyday Things (1988). When computers became design material in 1990s, humans became «users» which suggest that they are seen as part of technical systems (Bannon, 1991). «User-centred design» marked a deliberate shift away from the prevailing notion of «systems-centred design» which places the abilities of technology ahead of the usability needs of the consumer (Friess, 2008). Design went through the so-called user-centred design turn (Koskinen et al. 2011).

I first learned about user innovation from Von Hippel (2005) who introduced the concept of Lead User and User-driven innovation as a process of tapping users’ knowledge in order to develop new products, services and concepts. A user-driven innovation process is based on an understanding of true user needs and a more systematic involvement of users (Norden, 2008). However, user involvement has moved to a different approach in search for different methods and ways of working with consumers. Most recent is the focus on Human-centred design (HCD), according to Norman (2013) is an approach

that puts human needs, capabilities, and behaviour first. The process that ensures that the design match the needs and capabilities of the people for whom they are intended. Marc Steen (2004) and Peter Walters (2005) lead the differentiation between UCD and HCD, arguing Human-centred design places more emphasis on different stakeholders’ varying needs and broader contexts. Strictly usability centred approaches see only a part of a person, user centred approaches add context, whereas human-centred approaches try to see a complete person in different context (Steen, 2004). HCD is about co-creating with people, designers and everyday-people directly involved in the creation of products and services from the early beginning and continuing with the participation in the entire innovation process. Human-centred design is concerned with the full range of stakeholders, not only user (end-user, consumer) concerns, but perceptions and values of all the people around the project. William Rouse has said about HCD: The user is a very important stakeholder in design, often the primary stakeholder. However, the success of a product or service is usually strongly inf luenced by other players in the process of design, development, fielding and on-going use of products and services (Rouse, 2007).

Under the Human-centred approach several research methods have emerged, putting design practice at the core of the research process (Koskinen et al. 2011), including Design thinking a methodology that imbues the full spectrum of innovation activities with a Human-centered design ethos (Brown, 2009) and design methods including brainstorming, prototyping, mood boards, storyboards, personas, scenarios, mapping, role-play, among

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others, some of them represented in toolkits developed by design companies to apply in different business sectors even from non-designers. These methods also help to open the design process to multiple stakeholders (Sanders, 2006).

Despite the interest in user involvement in previous studies, there is an opportunity to explore the connection between design methodologies and business practice. According to Krippendorff (2006), human-centred design methods may aim also to involving users and stakeholders in design decisions. I am interested in collaboration initiatives that go beyond personalization and asking people for ideas, thus I will focus in processes with a direct involvement and a more participative role of consumers and in the potential to scale up them to different business environments.

RESEARCH QUESTIONMy research question is what is the contribution provided by users in the design process and developing of innovation?

RESEARCH METHOD AND NEXT STEPSDuring the first part of the project I followed an Exploratory research approach to determinate the best research design, data collection method and selection of subjects. I focused on understanding the context and identify key issues and variables related with my research topic. The primary research methods I used in this phase, including observation, reviewing available data and literature, informal discussions with users and colleagues, and in-depth interviews have been the main source for data collection of qualitative information.

More recent I have been also explored some methods related with Constructive design research approach (Koskinen et al., 2011), where I seek for inspiration from traditional (social sciences) research methods (developed by Future Concept Lab) and also from design tradition, to develop some practical experiments and use methods like mapping, toolkits, brainstorming, role-play, involving also FCL members. In some cases for building and ref lecting on the subject matter, and in some other to making sense of my research material.

I will conduct a case study oriented research and I am trying to define the unit of analysis. Next steps will include the definition of the case studies (sample selection), considering also if include or not external companies (additional to Future Concept Lab) according to my research purposes (i.e. Multiple-case designs, Yin, 2009).

KEY REFERENCESBannon, L. (1991). From human factors to human actors. The role of psychology and human-computer interaction studies in system design.Brown, T. (2008). Design Thinking. Harvard Business Review. Czyzewski, P., Johnson, J., Roberts, E. (1990). Participatory Design Conference PCC’90.Flinchum, J. (1997). Understanding the context of use surrounding products. Friess, E. (2008). The User-Centered Design Process: Novice Designers' Use of Evidence in Designing from Data (PhD thesis). Carnegie Mellon University. Garcia, R., and Calantone R. (2002). «A critical look at technological innovation typology and innovativeness.» The Journal of Product Innovation Management no. 19:110-132. Koskinen, I., Zimmerman, J., Binder, T., Redström, J., Wensween, S. (2011). Design research through practice. Norden Nordic Innovation Centre. Wise, E., Høgenhaven, C. -Editors- (2008). User-Driven Innovation. Context and Cases in the Nordic Region. Nordic Innovation Centre (NICe) project number: 07116.Norman, D. (2013). The Design of Everyday things. Revised and expanded edition.Rouse, W. (2007). People and organizations: Explorations of human-centered design.Sandberg, B. (2011). Managing and Marketing Radical Innovations. New York: Routledge.Sanders, E. B.-N., (2006). Design Research in 2006. Design Research Quarterly, Design Research Society.Schuler, D., Namioka, A., (1993). Participatory design: Issues and concerns.Steen, M., de Koning, N., Pikaart, A.: Exploring human centred approaches in market research and product development: Three case studies, in: Proceedings of SIGCHI.NL 2004 Conference, Amsterdam, 10 June 2004. New York: ACM Press. Verganti, R. (2009). Design-driven innovation: changing the rules of competition by radically innovating what things mean. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press. von Hippel, E. (2005). Democratizing Innovation, MIT Press, London.Walters, P. (2005). Knowledge in the Making: Prototyping and human-centred design practice, Sheffield Hallam University.Yin, R. K. (2009). Case study research: Design and methods (4th ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage

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