There’s been a lot of coverage over the last couple of years around the word “design.”Β Some people now regularly interchange the terms “design” and “innovation” as if they mean the same thing.
They don’t.
Innovation should be an inherent part of your strategy.Β A strategy without explicit acknowledgment of the need for an innovation component is a strategy that will not bring any benefit to the organisation.
If a business is not looking to develop new offerings that can bring high margins, then the business will not grow. Innovation is the key to this.
Design is different.
Design is a vital part of the process in developing new offerings – but does not need to be part of the strategy.Β You can only bring design into the process once you have identified product opportunities – or better still entirely new markets – and analysed the proposition.
It’s absolutely vital to have the design process inherent in the development of new offerings.Β Design brings customer insights, ergonomics and a whole raft of necessary thinking to the development of new offerings.Β There is also a strong element of innovation in the design process.
It would be pointless investing in the identification of new opportunity spaces, only to go to market with a product that is badly designed and does not meet the customer need.
The summary:
- innovation is a vital part of strategy
- a strategy that lacks an innovation component is not a good strategy
- design is essential when a market opportunity has been identified
- the best innovation processes in the world cannot compensate if you fail to leverage design
Now can someone please tell BusinessWeek to stop interchanging the words design and innovation?
@Roger
You’ve identified two parts of innovation that you suggest are pre-design. 1. Identify opportunities & 2. Analyse the proposition.
I’d agree that those steps might be prior to the traditional design process. But would have to disagree that they are seperate if (as Business Week do) we use design as short hand for “design thinking in a business”.
If the discussion is indeed about design thinking then the term innovation is interchangable and useful as a way of describing the concept in understandable business friendly terms.
Regards
Peter
Peter
thanks for weighing in on the issue. I’m interested in starting a debate about this as I’m not convinced that the phrase “design thinking” actually is of use to businesses.
I have not heard the term used in any organisations that I deal with, so I’m curious to see how your organisation (or clients) perceive it. That’s not to say that I’m right – far from it – but I’d love to have more comments about this.
Cheers
Roger
Roger
You’ve probably hit on a solution. Which might be to simply use language that resonates with the organisations that you deal with.
Right now the heavy duty insights and ideation skills in New Zealand often sit within market research firms or niche innovation shops. – Oftern not within design firms.
In that context, using the term innovation very seperately from design makes sense.
How do you describe the design tools you use to encourage innovation? As design tools, or innovation tools?
Cheers
Peter