Hi,
Based on case studies of five firms' actual cooperation with designers (the
manufacturing firms had several engineers among their core competent
management and key developers) I found support for the view that Chris
mentions: "designers (may) begin further back in the process" (i.e.
exploration process). In this way good designers tend to be able to find
the problem rather than merely responding to some filtered need statements,
thus often exploring unarticulated or latent needs, too, which bring us
back to the complexity and tacitness that Polyani and others have
suggested.
What I also found interesting was that some designers were able to do a lot
of what we may call 'boundary work'.* The study identified at least six
types of activities such as for example inquiry bringing in new
perspectives, constructing through boundary objects, expressing through
concepts, storytelling and further sense making and not to forget grounding
new expertise among multiple specialists (engineerings, marketers, etc)
thus being able to realize innovations and reconfigure new meaning for the
firm and its end users. Designers are not doing all this alone,
talent-appreciating relations (cf. design alliances), entrepreneurial
design championing, interactive teams and sustained organizing enabling
integration of design resources are (sometimes) present too.
So I have become even more triggered with the dynamism of what particular
designers and collaborators both imagine anddo, and how this can be
enabled, rather than merely the designerly vs. engineeringly thinking,
though I agree that we need to recognize the diversity as well as
overlapping of respective know-how. Indeed, both seem to be favourable for
creation of something new and valuable.
Any good reference that may push this broader picture further (or question
it) is appreciated,
Birgit
PS * A recent article elaborates aspects of this current research - see
"Exploring the innovating inbetween: industrial design as boundary work"
just published in International Journal of New Product Development &
Innovation Management, December/January 2003, 339-358 (publisher: Winthrop,
UK).
Birgit H. Jevnaker, associate professor
BI Norwegian School of Management, Department of Innovation and Economic
Organisation, Sandvika outside Oslo
also teaches at Industrial design/AHO and collaborates with NTNU (Norwegian
University of Science and Technology)
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