thesis product design innovation

Design-driven innovation: exploring new product development in the home appliances and furniture industry

The TQM Journal

ISSN : 1754-2731

Article publication date: 5 July 2021

Issue publication date: 17 December 2021

This paper aims to investigate the phases of new product development within the design-driven innovation (DDI) process, the role of designers and collaborators in the process and how this process relates to some quality principles.

Design/methodology/approach

This study adopted a qualitative approach using Gioia methodology. In particular, four Italian manufacturing companies in the home appliances and furniture industry were selected, and data mainly collected through direct interviews were analysed through content analysis.

The new product development related to DDI includes the following phases: the company brief, the designer research, the concept of the designer, the design, legal protection, prototyping, production and the market launch. Designers play a strategic role in the above phases of DDI, but other actors also cooperate and some quality principles affect positively on the process. This study proposes a model for a DDI process in the home appliances and furniture sector.

Research limitations/implications

Although this exploratory study was conducted on only four companies, it advances the DDI research in relation to new product development.

Practical implications

This study makes recommendations to entrepreneurs and managers on how to innovate successfully and to effectively manage designers and collaborators to ensure competition.

Social implications

This analysis highlights that design-based innovation contributes to improving the quality of life of consumers.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first qualitative study to examine the phases of new product development in DDI process, the actors involved and relationship to quality principles for the Italian home appliances and furniture sector.

• Design-driven innovation (DDI)
• Industrial design
• New product development
• Collaborators

Quality principles

Conti, E. and Chiarini, A. (2021), "Design-driven innovation: exploring new product development in the home appliances and furniture industry", The TQM Journal , Vol. 33 No. 7, pp. 148-175. https://doi.org/10.1108/TQM-12-2020-0313

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021, Emanuela Conti and Andrea Chiarini

Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Introduction

The fact that design can improve firm competitiveness appears nowadays unquestionable. In the last decade, the European Commission has strongly invested in the design-driven innovation (DDI) approach at national and regional levels as “Design creates value and contributes competitiveness, prosperity, and well-being in Europe” ( EU, 2013 ).

The importance of design for competitiveness is well documented in many countries with a strong tradition of design, such as Italy ( Verganti, 2003 , 2008 ) and Sweden ( Aydin and Erkarlsan, 2019 ), but DDI practices are also examined in emerging countries (i.e. China and Indonesia; see Zhang et al. , 2016 ; Kembaren et al. , 2014 ). However, DDI has only recently received attention in the managerial literature, and empirical studies are still rare.

In addition to market-pull and technology-push strategies to product innovation, Verganti (2009) introduced a third approach to innovation based on design. He defined DDI as “an innovation where novelty of message and design language is significant and prevalent compared to novelty of functionality and technology.” The novelty of innovation is the “knowledge about the signs that can be used to deliver a message to the user and about the sociocultural context in which the users will give meaning to those signs” ( Verganti, 2003 , 2006 ). In the DDI approach, companies with designers and other creative actors can create breakout products adding new and unsolicited meaning that consumers love because they are so different from other products that dominate the market ( Verganti, 2003 , 2009 ). Therefore, the strategy of DDI, namely meaning innovation , focuses on understanding, anticipating and yet influencing the meaning of emerging new products. However, the DDI process has not yet been sufficiently explored and needs to be better understood from a managerial perspective. Such an understanding is very important as it could assist in strengthening this strategic resource for competition of firms and countries.

Few studies proposed specific phases for the DDI process ( Design Council, 2007 ; Borja de Mozota, 2008 ; Acklin, 2010 ; Conti, 2018 ; Aydin and Erkarlsan, 2019 ), and others provided only the macro-phases, namely, listening, interpreting and addressing ( Verganti, 2003 , 2009 ; Dell'Era and Belini, 2009 ) as it seems that the complex and iterative design-driven process cannot be formalized. Therefore, there is need to conduct further empirical research to better understand the phases of this kind of innovation process.

Further, it is widely accepted in the literature on DDI that to produce new radical innovations, companies need to build relationships and a continuous dialogue with an exclusive circle of “interpreters” (designers, artists, suppliers, companies of other sectors, etc.) which help in identifying the “meaning” of the proposed innovation for users and customers ( Verganti, 2008 ). However, more practice-based studies to investigate the role of designers and other actors during the DDI process are required. Finally, another area of the literature on DDI which requires further investigation is connected to the relationship with quality. Even though the relationship between innovation and quality has been largely analysed ( Prajogo and Sohal, 2001 ; Singh and Smith, 2004 ; among others), the specific relationship between DDI process and quality management principles requires further investigation.

Hence, this study aims to address these identified gaps in the literature to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the DDI process in new product development. In particular, it tries to identify the phases of the process, the roles of designers and other actors in the process and the relationship between the process and some quality management principles, such as customer satisfaction/excitement, teamwork capacity and participative leadership.

More precisely, this study adopts a qualitative approach to analyse the Italian home appliances and furniture industry, and from this empirical analysis a theoretical model was built. Specifically, the home appliances and furniture sector was analysed as it is a particular design-intense sector ( Verganti, 2006 ; Dell'Era et al. , 2011 ; Simoni et al. , 2014 ), and Italy is one of the leading countries in the design culture and the furniture industry ( Sigolotto, 2010 ).

What are the phases of the DDI process in relation to new product development?

Which roles do designers and other collaborators play in the DDI process?

How main quality principles relate to the DDI process?

The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. First is the description and analysis of the selected literature. This is followed by an account of the methodology. Then, the results are presented and discussed. In the concluding section, we report the theoretical and practical implications and the limitations of the study and make suggestions for future research.

Theoretical background

Characteristics of design-driven innovation (ddi).

There is wide agreement on Verganti's (2003) interpretation of DDI as a managerial strategy for radical innovation based on the why of a new product or service (among others, Verganti, 2003 ; Dell'Era et al. , 2008 ; D'Ippolito, 2014 ; De Goey et al. , 2016 ). In particular, the author discovered that radical innovations often entail an innovation process that focuses on how to come up with a new interpretation of a product's meaning. Companies with designers and other creative actors can create breakout products that add new and unsolicited meaning to things people love because they are so different from other products that dominate the market ( Verganti, 2003 , 2009 ). The author suggests that new meaning is determined by the baggage of symbols and emotions that products carry with them and a complex set of qualities depending on the experience they propose.

Further, DDI is considered as complementary to other innovation theories, not a replacement tout-court . DDI sees design as a contribution to innovation through creating meaning, such as other drivers like technology or market ( Verganti and Dell'Era, 2014 ). While technology is the driver in technology-push innovations and demand in demand-pull innovations, the ability to give new meaning to things is the main driver of DDIs. However, this kind of innovation may include also technological innovation ( Verganti, 2003 ; Dell'Era et al. , 2008 ; D'Ippolito, 2014 ). More precisely, according to Verganti and Dell'Era (2014) design culture and sensibility, together with the ability to give new meaning to things, are able to satisfy latent needs and desires and open new markets, creating breakout products radically distant from the past and that show a new future.

Therefore, products characterized by new meanings, languages and innovation do not arise from market requests ( Verganti, 2003 ). In fact, the user-centred perspective, as found in design thinking, is criticized as not fully capturing the rich contribution of design to innovation ( Jahnke and Johansson-Sköldberg, 2014 ) because people are not searching only for new solutions to existing problems ( Öberg and Verganti, 2014 ). In Norman and Verganti’s (2014) view, user-centred design (UCD) or human-centred design (HCD) methods are weak regarding radical innovation. Verganti (2009) also affirmed that radical innovation means proposing a new understanding into the users' world instead of asking them what they need. In other words, the public does not ask for anything; rather, the visionary companies are the ones offering them something, making new proposals ( Verganti, 2009 ). For example, Nintendo Wii is a game console with motion-sensitive controllers that allow people to play games by moving their bodies; it transformed game consoles from an immersion in a virtual world approachable only by experts into an active workout for everyone. No one asked for this new meaning, but everyone loved it once they saw it.

Among the extensive literature on design management, many previous studies focused, for example, on the characteristics of a product design; in particular, a product design may be defined as a “beautiful and well made” product which combines functionality, expressed by technology, with aesthetic form and/or symbolic value ( Bloch, 2011 ; Ravasi and Rindova, 2008 ; Luchs and Swan, 2011 ; D'Ippolito, 2014 ). Other previous studies examined the types of barriers and problems small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have to overcome to adopt DDI such as lack of design resources ( Cox, 2005 ; Landoni et al. , 2016 ) or human and financial resources ( Fuesglistaller, 2004 ; D'Ippolito, 2014 ) or design culture ( Moultrie et al. , 2007 ). Some studies also analysed how a product design creates value for customers as it meets the rational and emotional needs of customers (among others Bloch, 2011 ; D'Ippolito 2014 ). However, few studies focus on the DDI process as we will explain in the next paragraph.

DDI: phases of new product development

The new product development models ( Cooper, 1996 ; Benkenstein, 1998 , among others) are considered inadequate to describe the DDI process, as they consider industrial design only as part of company's R&D or included it in the conception phase. Furthermore, the managerial literature on design does not focus on the process, process phases or actions for DDI, and little consensus is found among the authors on this subject ( De Goey et al. , 2016 ). According to Verganti (2008) , the process of DDI is not formalized, is difficult to grasp by applying research methods used in product development and starts from an insight into new product meanings and not with an insight into the needs of a consumer. In order to produce radical innovation, companies need to build relationships with actors or “interpreters” (individuals and organizations) which may help identifying the “meaning” of the proposed innovation for users and customers. More precisely, according to Verganti (2009) , companies need to be immersed in the so-called design discourse that is a network of interpreters (designers, artists, suppliers, companies of other sectors, etc.) that are explicitly or implicitly engaged in a systematic dialogue in which they exchange insights, interpretations and proposals in the form of artwork, studies, speeches, prototypes and products. DDI is a research process in which knowledge and interpretations are fed into the creation of a new vision or proposal and aimed at creating breakthrough product family or new business. In particular, the author has identified three main activities of DDI: listening to, interpreting and addressing the design discourse ( Verganti, 2009 ). More in detail, listening to the design discourse consists in accessing and understanding knowledge about possible meanings and languages of new products, by attracting key interpreters in the outside network (not only designers); interpreting is when knowledge is fed into a process that can create a new vision and proposal; it implies integrating and recombining knowledge captured from the design discourse, as well as producing new interpretations, by conducting internal research and experiments; addressing the design discourse means diffusing your vision to interpreters, influencing how people give meanings to things; it implies defining appropriate means to allow interpreters to discuss and internalize new proposals ( Verganti, 2009 , p. 133).

Making the connection to new product development (NPD), Dell'Era et al. (2008) identified a so-called meta-project, which occurs prior to product development. Within this project, collaborations among actors are established and changes in sociocultural contexts are researched. Verganti (2008) described DDI as a research process in which technological and design research starts at the beginning of the meta-project phase. Companies and designers search for relevant knowledge about recent design and technology discourses before the generation of ideas. Verganti (2009) defined this context as the design discourse .

The process that follows is not divided into clearly defined phases ( Dell'Era and Verganti, 2009 ), as it is a process whereby exploration, diverging phases, and converging phases iterate ( Jahnke and Johansson-Sköldberg, 2014 ).

However, few explorative studies have proposed specific phases for the DDI process ( de Mozota, 2008 ; Acklin, 2010 ; Design Council, 2017 ; Conti, 2018 ; Aydin and Erkarlsan, 2019 ). Even though in these studies there are similarities among phases, there is not yet a unique widely accepted proposal. For example, according to Borja de Mozota (2008) , the creative process of a designer developing a new product is structured as follows: (1) research, (2) exploration, (3) development, (4) implementation and (5) evaluation. Similarly, Acklin (2010) proposed a model for SMEs structured as follows: (1) impulse, (2) research, (3) development, (4) strategy, (5) implementation and (6) evolution.

In a similar vein, Conti (2018) proposed the following phases of the process of radical product innovation by examining the procedure of a leading company in business-to-business (BtoB) marketing in the furniture sector, whereby designers cooperate strictly with company staff in terms of (1) the brief of the company, (2) the design proposal, (3) the maquette, (4) legal protection, (5) the design, (6) the prototyping, (7) the pre-series production and (8) the series production. In the first step, the brief includes the request from the company along with basic limitations that afford great freedom to the designer; the designer, in the second step, proposes the concept in the form of drawings and written descriptions; after the pre-prototyping phase, known as the maquette, the legal protection and design phases follow. The design step consists of the identification and definition of the details of the components and their successive representation in constructive drawings. In the phase of prototyping that follows, marketing and commercial departments may intervene and suggest corrections to the product, and finally production and launch to the market ensue. Pre-series production anticipates production and is useful for testing the product through feedback from loyal clients, for quantifying its industrial cost and for collecting orders.

Similarly, a qualitative study analysed how Swedish and Turkish companies in the furniture sector undertook research for and designed a novel product meaning for a new customer ( Aydin and Erkarlsan, 2019 ). The study outlined that the design push NPD consists of the meta-project phase, and of the product development phase, which includes prototyping, material selection, product language design and communication design.

Collaborators of the DDI process

As explained in the previous paragraph the network of collaborators, the so-called design discourse provided by Verganti (2009 , pp. 120–133), plays a crucial role in the DDI process. However, little has been studied and discussed in detail about the contribution of the actors involved in DDI, and empirical research is recommended ( De Goey et al. , 2019 ). Research shows that DDI requires collaborating with external networks to expose companies to different perspectives ( Brøde et al. , 2014 ; Verganti and Dell'Era, 2014 ). The importance of open innovation processes for value creation is not new ( Leifer et al. , 2000 ; Chesbrough, 2003 ; Vanhaverbeke et al. , 2008 ; Laursen and Salter, 2006 ; Mina et al. , 2014 ; D’Angelo and Baroncelli, 2020 ). Many actors co-produce the product bringing different sources of knowledge to its creation ( Laursen and Salter, 2006 ; Mina et al. , 2014 ). In a DDI approach, external actors play a critical role as “interpreters” of the evolution of the socio-economic context, thus contributing to develop ideas, insights and new products with new meanings.

Firms developing DDIs must collaborate with different categories of interpreters to explore new scenarios. Verganti (2009) defined interpreters as “firms in other industries that target the same users, suppliers of new technologies, researchers, designers, and artists, that can provide complementary and synergistic knowledge”. These can be grouped into two main categories: the world of cultural production (i.e. people whose core mission is exploring culture and meaning) and the world of technology (i.e. people who focus their efforts on exploring radical changes in technologies and drive technical innovations). To develop DDIs, firms must enter into dialogue with this external network, which enables taking a step back from their view of the industry and facilitates a more holistic interpretation of the surrounding sociocultural arena ( Verganti, 2009 ; Verganti and Dell'Era, 2014 ).

A recent study on Swedish and Turkish companies in the furniture sector ( Aydin and Erkarlsan, 2019 ) suggests that companies should collaborate with various actors from different cultural backgrounds, not only with experts from different sectors, such as production, service and communication, but also with other experts, such as artists, sociologists, architects and trendsetters to discuss and develop their forecasts.

In summary, the marketing and managerial literature on design reveals some gaps, which the present study seeks to address. First is the innovation process in cooperation with designers and requires further understanding: some authors argue that it is difficult to formalize, while others stress the importance of trying to define the steps of such a process to manage better DDI – through the identification, management and control of the process – which is a strategy for competitiveness. Second, the literature has only poorly investigated the actors (or interpreters) and their roles in this process. Hence, this study tries to understand both the steps of the process and the actors involved by examining four leading Italian companies in the home appliances and furniture sector. In addition, this study aimed to contribute to fill another gap in the literature – the relationship between DDI and quality principles – which will be described in the next paragraph.

Quality management and design-driven innovation

The relationship between quality management, quality principles and design management in general has been studied extensively. Several papers analysed the relationship from a more technical and engineering point of view. For instance, Andreasen (1991) and Hubka and Eder (2002) presented different design methods and tools, including the quality function deployment (QFD), which could be of great help in improving product characteristics and quality. Pighini et al. (2001) , introduced a technical approach based on design for X methods with the aim of improving product quality and safety. Lanzotti and Tarantino (2008) proposed a statistical-based Kansei engineering approach. This method, along with the well-known Kano analysis, allows the identification of quality elements satisfying user needs.

However, all the above-mentioned papers did not study how quality principles could affect DDI performance.

The influence of quality management on innovation seems to have both negative and positive effects. Some common aspects between quality management and innovation such as continuous improvement, performance measurement and an “open” culture ( Prajogo and Sohal, 2001 ) suggest that organizations that implement quality could be more innovative than organizations that do not ( Singh and Smith, 2004 ). However, the “tyranny of the market” to which quality management is subject could have negative consequences on innovative performance ( Perdomo-Ortiz et al. , 2006 ).

In a recent study, the relationship between DDI performance and quality management was analysed in Italian manufacturing companies ( Conti et al. , 2019 ). It revealed the existence of many common elements of product design and quality product, especially aesthetics, quality materials, technology and environmental sustainability and their positive influence on the perception of customer value. Further, it stressed that the companies most inclined to innovation pay attention to less traditional and more recent elements of quality and design such as aesthetics, technology and environmental sustainability.

Among important principles of quality culture, three of them seem to have a positive influence on the new product development within DDI. The first principle is related to customer satisfaction and excitement requirements ( Tontini, 2007 ; Wang and Ji, 2010 ); the second refers to teamwork capacity ( Escribá-Moreno et al. , 2008 ; Colurcio, 2009 ); the third concerns the participative leadership ( Parumasur, 2013 ). Therefore, this study aims also to understand the relationship among DDI and these total quality management principles.

Indeed, apart from studies focused on technical and engineering aspects of the relationship between quality and DDI, few papers deeply investigated quality principles and DDI from a managerial perspective.

The relevance of home appliances and furniture sector among intense-design sectors

This study analyses the home appliances and furniture sector as it is one of the most design-intense sector ( Verganti, 2006 ; Dell'Era et al. , 2011 ; Simoni et al. , 2014 ) and focuses on the Italian context as Italy is considered one of the most important countries for design culture and innovation ( Sigolotto, 2010 ). To meet people’s needs in furnishing houses and offices and to remain competitive, companies of the home appliances and furniture sector need to constantly innovate in terms of not only technology or functionality but also design ( Verganti, 2009 ). An example of recent DDI in the Italian furniture sector is the innovative furniture system with integrated acoustic insulation panels that meets the new demand for original solutions for co-working workplaces (shared production areas where the emerging class of “millennials” can work together), mitigating the noise-related bad effects on workers ( Geniola et al. , 2020 ).

The Italian home appliances and furniture companies need to face many new challenges. In an increasingly customized economy, much of design elements have to be inserted in the final products even though consumers may choose many product's features ( Bumgardner and Nicholl, 2020 ). Given the increasing consumer interest in sustainability of product design, good furniture design should consider the sustainability issues connected to product design (use of recyclable materials, product durability and reliability, low consumption, etc.) key elements of competitiveness ( Bumgardner and Nicholl, 2020 ). Further, this sector could benefit from the new concept of “knowledge differences” that arise between people, organizations and various phenomena and create boundaries knowledge, a dynamic process that accelerates innovation ( Kodama and Kimura, 2020 ). To grasp these opportunities and strengthen innovativeness and competitiveness, especially SMEs should improve their design management skills ( Ferrara and Lecce, 2019 ).

Methodology

Research design.

This study uses a qualitative, exploratory and multiple-case study design proposing four cases of Italian manufacturing companies.

In particular, the case study method was chosen as it is very useful to understand contemporary phenomena and practices ( Yin, 1984 ) and to provide background material to actual issues which are still not well known such as the DDI. Case studies are used to test theory, to describe specific contexts and also to develop theory ( Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007 ; Yin, 1984 ). In this study, we use this method to develop a model from the analysis of data collected mainly through interviews. Specifically, multiple-case study method ( Yin, 1984 ) was adopted to identify which are the phases of new product development of manufacturing firms and to gain a clearer understanding and characterization of the phenomenon under investigation by comparing similarities and differences emerging from the analysis ( Silverman, 2000 ).

The four selected cases met appropriateness to the research aim as well expressed the phenomenon of inquiry, and also met adequacy as with four cases information saturation with in-depth information could be reached ( Patton, 2002 ).

Hence, the study adopted a theoretical sampling strategy ( Patton, 2002 ): cases were selected on the basis of theoretical reasons, that is, to allow the new product development in DDI to be investigated and cases rich in information to be studied in depth and in detail. The home appliance and furniture sector was chosen as it is one of the most design-intensive sectors, and four Italian companies were selected based on their strong design cultures, their competitiveness as reflected in DDI and their awards received for design.

This paper defines home appliances and furniture industry in a broad sense, including all the producers of appliances, accessories and furniture for home and public places.

Furthermore, to increase the quality of results, cases were selected to have maximum variation for the purpose of obtaining different cases and to have a literal replication, that is, expecting to obtain similar results ( Patton, 2002 ).

They are market leader in their sub-industry: (1) kitchens; (2) fridges and furniture for bars, ice cream parlors and pastry shops; (3) home accessories, such as tables, chairs and shelves; and (4) cookware.

They are strongly design-oriented: they are perceived by experts as examples of excellence in their sector by producing design items that offered unique features and high-quality finishings, and obtaining awards for design (especially the Compasso d'Oro).

They operate on a global scale.

They have different sizes, encompassing small, medium and large companies, with a turnover ranging from 5 to 60 million and numbers of employees ranging from 40 to 300.

They are particularly committed to quality management and principles, and they are ISO 9001 and 14001 certified.

Data collection

Information was collected through twenty direct interviews with the four companies of the sample, triangulated with other sources of data ( Yin, 1984 ), such as the analysis of website, balance sheet and archival documentation and a day spent in each company.

In particular, five direct and unstructured interviews were conducted with the entrepreneur (E), the R&D director (RD), the production director (PD), the sales and marketing director (MD) and the quality director (QD) of each company.

The four companies were contacted by phone and gave their availability for open-ended in-depth interviews in the period from August to December 2019 and in March 2021.

The interview protocol ( Table 1 ) was designed in order to answer the research questions, that is to investigate each company's steps in the DDI process, as well as how the companies relate to designers and other external actors of the creative network. Finally, also the relationship among DDI and quality principles connected to customer satisfaction and excitement, participative leadership and teamwork capacity was investigated. An initial question of the protocol was aimed to obtain a description of a successful design product (e.g. an awarded design product) of each company. It was considered a useful premise to identify the characteristics of the output of the DDI, that is, the innovation process under investigation.

Direct interviews were conducted in a flexible manner to ensure that themes emerged spontaneously in the respondents' feedback. During data collection, researchers played a strategic role by being an active listener, thus ensuring respondents correctly understood the questions and encouraged the interviewees to describe each aspect in detail. Each interview lasted 40 min. Further, interviews were carried out in Italian, recorded, transcribed and then translated in English for data analysis process.

Interviews with different respondents of the same company and the rigour of data collection approach could reduce problems of bias of respondents ( Yin, 2018 ). The use of multiple informants mitigates, in fact, the potential biases of any individual respondent by allowing information to be confirmed by several sources.

Secondary data, collected from multiple sources, such as website, balance sheet and archival documentation, enabled cross-checking through triangulation, revealing a high level of consistency.

Data analysis

highlighting in the text what is relevant to the topic of the research;

initially coding each distinct first-order category;

grouping similar codes to create more focused categories;

identifying theoretical themes.

In particular, data analysis and interpretation followed the approach recommended by Gioia et al. (2013) , a widely used method to understand management issues (e.g. Lindh and Thorgren, 2016 ; Chandra, 2017 ).

In this study, the analysis of the collected data began with an analysis of data collected from each company, mainly in the form of transcribed interviews, through the lens of our research questions. Each of the authors read the data collected independently to identify codes that are significant “statements”, describing, respectively, the phases of DDI process, the role of designers and other actors in such a process and the quality principles related to the process, present in each of the four cases.

This approach consists in coding the data corpus (the informants' voices) using first-order codes, before aggregating them into second-order themes (abstract concepts taken from the first-order categories) and, finally, identifying the aggregate dimensions (the theoretical themes). The aim of this process is to identify themes, that is, phases, actors and quality principles connected to DDI.

Coding was undertaken conservatively, based on what the data explicated. Through a comparison of the codes, similarities and differences were identified, and the number of codes was reduced. In particular, each researcher separately coded the concepts of the first order, carried out consistency checks and carefully coded all the textual data, thus allowing for multiple coding of each textual unit, and thereby guaranteeing the triangulation of the data.

After this, the researchers compared their coding schemes. Any discrepancy that emerged during the discussion was reconciled so that a shared understanding was reached, and a unique coding scheme identified. Codes consisted of significant statements from all four cases connected to the three areas of investigation – phases of DDI, role of designers and collaborators and relationship of the process with quality principles.

Following this, the connections between the concepts that might lead to the development of second-order themes, elaborated on a more abstract level, were identified. The researchers then assembled the emerging themes related to the concepts in the aggregate dimensions – more precisely, with specific reference to the dimensions of the DDI process's steps, the number of codes progressed from 31 (concepts) to 17 second-order themes, and then to seven aggregated dimensions. With regard to relationships with designers and other external actors, the number of codes progressed from 12 first-order concepts to eight second-order themes, and then to five aggregated dimensions.

Finally, with reference to the relationships with quality principles, the number of codes progressed from 11 first-order concepts to 6 second-order themes, and then to 3 aggregated dimensions.

The findings were then discussed using the theoretical lens of Verganti's (2009) model of design approach consisting of macro-phases – listening, interpreting and addressing – and the actors or interpreters (designers and collaborators) starting from Verganti's (2008) design discourse framework and explained in reference to the literature.

Company profiles

Table 2 shows the characteristics of the companies in the sample, indicating their specializations in the industry, firm size and experience in DDI, and providing a description of an award-winning product designed by each company.

With regard to examples of design products, company A introduced to the market one of the most revolutionary products in the sector, a breakthrough product consisting of the first round and rotating display case to combine perfect refrigeration (with an enticing display of ice cream) and functionality.

An “evergreen” design product of company B is a collection of pans that are high performing, resistant and suitable for all cooking modes (oven, gas, induction, electric hob or radiant glass-ceramic), and, with their elegant lines, they are suitable for display on the table. This product was apparently inspired by a car design, for which the line was designed in a wind tunnel.

Company C designed a modern kitchen that incorporates innovations in terms of functionality, aesthetics and technical performance, thus creating an environment with a strong “personality.” Product 3 is equipped with an innovative door that seals the cabinet, preventing the entry of dust and small insects, while allowing air circulation with pressure or temperature changes by means of a filter and membrane holes. This is a radical innovation in the sector, and the company has obtained a patent for the invention. Other innovative aspects of this product are its concealed elements and new materials.

Finally, product 4 of company D is a breakthrough product for the sector, a sort of “mirror of the soul”, of interiority, a magical place to recover a dialogue with oneself. Its innovation concerns not only meanings and sense making, but also the form and the processing of glass and functionality. In fact, each single module comprises 21 different elements, worked separately, in extra clear glass. These are glued one at a time and welded using ultra-violet lamps.

New product development phases of DDI

All the companies examined developed new products in a similar way, adopting the following phases: the company brief, the designer research, the designer concept, the design, legal protection, prototyping, production and the launch to the market. The entrepreneurs interviewed agreed that the innovation process consists of three macro-phases: listening, interpreting and addressing.

The innovation process is not linear and rigid but flexible; it is driven by “trial and error”, parallel activities and learning by doing. In addition, innovation is an “open process”, wherein external actors, such as suppliers, artists, and universities, cooperate. Following Table 3 , which presents the data on the phases of DDI for design product development, each phase of the process is described in detail.

Company brief

We give to designers a quite vague brief, a sensation, and ask him or her to create a project that satisfies the minimum requirements, for example, to use the available glass plates. But designers can become upset and ask to modify the glass plates, which seems to be a constraint.

While the architectural structure of the pan—the round pan with a handle—remains unchanged, details, materials, colors, finishings may be changed. We start the process of product innovation with an idea, a brief, and we invite the designer to visit the company to learn the productive process and the constraints connected to technologies and costs.

The product innovation process with designers starts with a brief through which the company declares its aims, its needs, and that leaves ample space for designers. For example, before launching the Icon model on the market we wanted to produce a technical and rigorous kitchen, such as the German ones, but at the same time, with an Italian style.

If we want a radical product innovation, we need to work with a designer who suggests new ideas. For this reason, we like to work with designers who have not worked in our industry before and can bring fresh ideas and very original proposals to our company.

More rarely, designers make proposals to companies before being contacted by them.

Designer research

All respondents affirmed that, following the brief, designers conduct personal research to investigate user demand and trends related to the industry, and that, generally, such research includes the study of related industries as well as the artistic and fashion worlds. Every designer conducts research in a broad socio-economic context to develop ideas that could not only meet users' unexpressed desires but surprise and excite them.

The designer research is aimed at finding original solutions, which may be very different from the suggestions initially given by the companies. The research is a sort of “applied research” aimed at finding a solution for the company.

Designers are always immersed in a creative world, made of networks of people and organizations. During the personal and applied research—following the brief—they look for specific solutions.

According to designers, the industry trends can be understood if you first look at the artistic and fashion worlds, as they anticipate the tendencies of all the sectors.

The design concept

Each designer usually presents two or three concepts, mainly in the form of rendering and rarely as a sketch on a sheet. A concept consists of a drawing and a verbal description of the new product. Entrepreneurs select the concept that best meets the constraints indicated by the company and, at the same time, propose new, original, functional and emotional products.

Concepts from designers may vary from the initial suggestions provided by the entrepreneur, but I appreciate this a lot as the originality of the designer is fundamental to developing breakthrough products, which are really new in the sector.

I select concepts that meet the requirements of economic, technical, and market feasibility. By market feasibility I intend how the new products may satisfy the company's target.

Some designers propose even 10 concepts, but we consider the 2 or 3 ideas that best meet our request. We do not have information on the kind of work the designer conducts from the brief to the presentation of the concepts, but we know he his immersed in his network where he develops ideas.

In this phase of the innovation process, it is sometimes necessary that designers present pre-prototypes. In particular, as we produce a quite complex product (kitchen) made of many components, it is important to develop concepts in the form of small prototypes.

Respondents affirmed that in the design phase, each component of the new product is studied and defined in detail through construction drawings. Further, they stated that new products are designed to have a meaning, to show no defects and to be easy to sell; in short, products as an outcome of the DDI process must be “beautiful and well executed.” More specifically, the entrepreneurs interviewed agreed on the following elements that qualify a product of design: functionality, aesthetics, technology, materials, performance, processing, meaning and sustainability.

From the acceptance of the concept of the designer, an iterative process follows between the designer and the technical office to make the concept industrialized. The process lasts about a month and CAD files are developed.

Our designer and artistic director is also a good technician and engineer and provides advanced projects already in the concept phase. In fact, the company implement the design in a pre-prototype co-created with suppliers of components who require clear projects.

Before the design phase, it could be useful to create pre-prototypes, for example, to better understand the functioning of a component, especially when the product is complex or strongly innovative.

Legal protection

After the design phase, the legal protection phase follows. All the respondents agreed on the idea that not all new products are legally protected but the most innovative ones in the sector must be.

Although our most innovative products are legally protected, the best way to be competitive is to innovate systematically.

Prototyping follows the legal protection phase. All the respondents explained that products are tested mainly internally, but the most complex products, such as kitchens, fridges and furniture, for the BtoB market are also tested in external specialized laboratories. This is an important step to improve the quality and safety of new products before production. All companies also stressed that at this stage of the process, little improvements may be suggested, especially by marketing and sales department and by clients.

Prototypes are tested especially for durability and resistance both internally and in Cosmob, a local technology centre. Tests are compulsory for contract products and not for products marketed to consumers, but we test all the products. From these tests, eventual little corrections to draws are made and also marketing and sale departments may suggest product improvements.

Tests on prototypes are made especially on materials, resistance to scratches, and thermal shocks. Sometimes, we ask our key clients to test a pre-prototype. But our retailers give us the most important feedback (the real test!) at the exhibition, the “Salone del Mobile”, which takes place every two years in Milan. This allows the company to make eventual improvements to the product.

Production and market launch

Production is a teamwork phase used by those companies that manufacture more complex products, such as A and C, where some components are manufactured by suppliers. All respondents affirmed that pre-series may be necessary to take pictures for product catalogues.

With regard to the market launch, all respondents explained that designers may participate in this phase by providing advice or suggestions, but they are not directly involved in the communication and distribution of products, with the exception of C, whose internal designer and artistic director played a strong role in the final step of the IDD process. According to entrepreneurs, designers seem to be interested and satisfied to cooperate in this phase, and they are keen to receive immediate market feedback on the new products.

Production of new pans may also include process innovation, connected to the introduction of new technologies or new materials or processing. Final products are generally coherent with research designs.

Pre-series are produced to receive feedback from loyal clients, to quantify industrial costs and to obtain orders.

Designers are part of our team and participate in all the steps of the product innovation process, until the market feedback, which represents a moment of satisfaction also for designers who receive appreciation and comments about the products.

In particular in our company the designer who is also the creative director plays a strategic role also in these phases of new product developments, as he designs the stand at the “Salone del mobile” fair and the layout of single-brand stores abroad and cooperate to plan the communication polity.

The role of actual and potential clients comes at the end of the process, as it is fundamental that they appreciate and buy the new products! This implies that they understand the value connected to the new meanings and other innovations, for example technological innovations, incorporated into new products!

Actors involved in DDI

In this section, Table 4 presents the data for the external actors (or interpreters) involved in the DDI process. A description of the participation of each collaborator in the process follows. Before identifying these actors, the information about the ways companies select designers and cooperate with them is reported.

All the companies examined cooperated with different external designers – apart from C, whose internal designer was also the artistic director of the company – and their relationships with their creatives were “warm”, open and collaborative during all the steps of NPD (see Table 5 ).

Famous designers are selected together with young, promising ones, under the criterion that they should bring original solutions to companies. One entrepreneur searched for designers who were not familiar with the industry as they could propose more original solutions. Only two companies affirmed that their designers did not participate in the final or commercial phase after the launch to the market (B and D).

Suppliers and sub-suppliers play a strategic role in the DDI as they may suggest innovations in materials and technologies, alone or in collaboration with designers and the company.

Further, users contribute to the innovation process. Designers study demand trends, and, through their marketing and commercial departments, companies try to understand their market segment and select the most adequate concept of design.

Nearly all the respondents affirmed that designers and companies do listen to users' desires and cooperate with technological centres to test products or components. This is especially true for the most complex products, such as kitchens, fridges and furniture for BtoB markets, where cooperation with these specialized centres is required to test products and/ or components.

We strongly support young creative people; in fact, young designers are always around in the company and participate in design competitions organized by the company.

Finally, the entrepreneurs explained that the company and the designers cooperate with the creative network . In particular, all the entrepreneurs agreed that it is important to be aware of sector trends and trends in related sectors, and that designers become immersed in the art and fashion worlds , visiting exhibitions and events connected to design to develop creativity and innovation. The respondents asserted that they had a good relationship with the ADI and participated successfully in the prestigious annual competition Il Compasso D'oro. EC specified “ we cooperate systematically with la Triennale of Milano, a place which hosts exhibitions and events connected to design. ”

Among the creative network are included local industrial associations . In recent years, all the companies interviewed have participated actively in an important initiative – “Innovation and Design” – aimed at diffusing the culture of design promoted by local trade associations.

Finally, all the four companies affirmed to adopt the quality principles connected to customer satisfaction and excitement, collaborative leadership and teamwork capacity.

Only thanks to the cooperation with designers we can put on the market products that not only satisfy clients, but surprise and excite them.

Designers are able to innovate in a way that overcome customer needs and desires.

among quality principles the ability to work together with different competences is fundamental for the success of new product development with designers.

a collaborative leadership and a culture of design are the basic skills which may facilitate the DDI in a company.

A proposed model of the DDI process related to the development of new products

Figure 1 shows a model of the design-driven process with the steps, actors and quality principles involved as it has emerged from empirical research. This model is the output of the answers to the research questions and it synthesizes the main findings of this study.

This study has explored and deepened the understanding of the phases and actors of DDI NPD and of the relationship between this process and some quality principles to seek answers to the research questions. The data analysed show recognizable similarities to Verganti's frameworks and the cited literature but also propose some additional aspects, enriching the knowledge in the field.

The first research question focused on the phases of NPD related to DDI in the interviewed companies from the home appliances and furniture industry, namely, the company's brief, the designer research, the designer's concept, the design, legal protection, prototyping, production and the market launch. The results confirm that the process of product development within the DDI of the companies examined consists of three macro-phases, namely, listening, interpreting and addressing ( Verganti, 2009 ), and that, in the initial creative phase, known in the literature as the meta-project phase ( Dell'Era et al. , 2008 ), the designer conducts wide-ranging and multidisciplinary research.

This study underlines that the listening to the design discourse is made mainly by designers and that companies do not know how designers conduct their research but are aware that designers are immersed in networks wherein they develop ideas for innovation. Further, companies know that designers conduct a wide and heterogeneous research on the past and future trends of the industry and connected industries, on expressed an unexpressed needs and desires of users, on the history of successful products and on trends in fashion and arts. Thus, this study on the one hand confirms the difficulty in clearly understanding all aspects of DDI ( Verganti, 2009 ; among others), but, on the other hand, it adds knowledge on this initial phase of DDI connected to new product development. This study emphasis that designer is a sort of a “company intermediary” for external design discourse as he/she has developed important relationships with actors of that wide network to develop ideas. This study also underlines that the work of designers is personal, unique and that he/she develops tacit knowledge difficult to transfer to others.

Further, the DDI phases identified in this study add new knowledge to the field, contributing especially to a deeper understanding of DDI process phases identified in previous studies that are not homogenous ( De Bozota, 2008 ; Acklin, 2010 ; Design Coincil, 2017 ; Aydin and Erkarlsan, 2019 ). Specifically, this study has pinpointed clear and specific phases of DDI: the company brief, the designer's research, the designer's concept, the design, legal protection, prototyping, production and the market launch.

All the companies agreed on the presence of the above eight different phases, although with slight differences: one company does not frequently protect legally its products, and a couple of them do not involve a lot of designers in the market launch phase but leave this option open.

The results of many previous studies stress that the company's brief is the initial phase of the process, while other studies do not explicitly include it (e.g. Borja De Mozota, 2008 ). This study confirms that company's brief is the first step of the process. Further, the final phase, the market launch, is never present in the literature. Again, this study sheds light on the process stressing that market launch is the final step of the process. Most of previous studies do not include this phase in the process. Conversely, aspects such as pre-series production and legal protection are covered in the literature. This study provides a detailed explanation of each phase, thanks to in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs and managers.

This is the first study to investigate the home appliances and furniture sector as a whole, a particularly design-intense sector, which has been never examined as macro-sector including all related industries, such as furniture, accessories, kitchens and cookware. In fact, another recent study focused solely on the furniture sector ( Aydin and Erkarlsan, 2019 ). Like the furniture sector, all the sub-sectors of the home appliances and furniture industry are mature, and technological or functional innovation alone is not sufficient to ensure competitiveness. Companies can innovate by introducing new meanings and languages, together with innovations in technology and function. This study confirms that DDI considers many aspects of the product innovation, including meanings, functionality, aesthetics, performance, materials, and sustainability (e.g. Verganti, 2003 ; D'Ippolito, 2014 ). Therefore, the study reinforces the idea of design-driven innovation as a new way to innovate which is not only complementary to other kinds of innovation (incremental innovations in the examined companies are demand-pull) but may also integrate other kinds of innovation (new design products of the companies examined often include also technological innovation) ( Verganti, 2008 ; Verganti and Dell'Era, 2014 ).

It is clear in this study that the driver of innovation neither demand nor technology alone, but new meanings and sense together with improvements of functionality, technology and so forth ( Verganti, 2008 , 2009 ). From the interviews, it emerged clearly that clients and customers may eventually suggest little corrections to products in the final phases of the DDI process, respectively, after prototype and/or pre-series phases. This result provides empirical evidence which is needed in this relatively recent managerial field.

The entrepreneurs and managers interviewed have a great design culture and consider industrial design as a main driving factor of competitiveness. All respondents revealed that they started the process of product development with a company brief, which indicated the scope of the company and the basic idea for the new product that the designers were asked to develop. Therefore, entrepreneurs are interested in and passionate about design. Usually, basic ideas and sensations are formulated by entrepreneurs, and, more rarely, designers spontaneously contact entrepreneurs. This step of the process stresses the importance to develop a strong feeling, understanding and cooperation, especially between entrepreneur and designer in the initial steps of the process in order to develop radical innovations.

The study stresses that the majority of concepts consist of renderings of the new products, and, where products are complex, such as kitchens, designers propose small prototyping, so that production may be anticipated by pre-series production to allow loyal customers to give feedback about the new product. The study found that nearly all products are legally protected.

In answer to the second research question – the role of designers and other actors in the DDI process – this study stresses that designers play a strategic role in the process and conduct personal research (the meta-project phase) in their networks, referred to as design discourse by Verganti (2009) . As explained above, designers are the key actors in the innovation process who listen to the design discourse and interpret it, proposing new products in cooperation with companies and other actors in a team work, until the launch of the products on the market (addressing the design discourse). While the previous literature has identified in general terms all the actors of the external network ( Verganti, 2009 ), this study has identified the specific actors that usually participate in the process: designers, suppliers, clients/users, universities and education systems, technological centres and creative networks. Further, this study examined their roles more in depth, contributing to fill a gap in the literature ( De Goey et al. , 2019 ). While it is intuitive that designers cooperate successfully in the process, this study has stressed the importance of other actors, for example, suppliers cooperate with designers and companies, and sometimes even anticipate them in the innovation of components. Additionally, technological centres are fundamental for testing products as the majority of companies cannot conduct many product tests internally.

As explained above, also clients and customers may provide suggestions in the final phases of the process, but only in terms of eventual little innovations to improve the success of the products.

However, important roles are also played by universities and industrial associations. A special actor of the external environment is the “creative network”, which, in the home appliances and furniture sector examined, is represented by actors in relationships with designers and/or companies, art and fashion, exhibitions and events, other related sectors, design associations and industrial associations. All these actors participate in specific steps of the process and cooperate with companies and designers in a team work, who lead the process.

It is important to underline that this study tries to formalize the DDI product development process of the home appliances and furniture sector with the intention not to “simplify” the process or to consider it a linear one, as it is complex and iterative; the aim of this contribution is to understand in more depth the macro-phases and to identify the eventual similarities between companies in the same macro-sector.

Therefore, this study takes the cognitive approach of innovation studies and confirms that innovation is open innovation (e.g. Chesbrough, 2003 , 2006 ), as many actors co-produce the product bringing different sources of knowledge to its creation ( Laursen and Salter, 2006 ; Mina et al. , 2014 ).

In answering the third research question, according to what was found from the literature, all the four companies adopt the quality principles connected to customer satisfaction/excitement, collaborative leadership and teamwork capacity. In particular, the research aimed to investigate eventual relationships among DDI and some important quality principles. From this point of view, we can confirm what is already known from the literature, specifically the adoption of principles like customer satisfaction/excitement, collaborative leadership and teamwork capacity could facilitate DDI product innovation. Hence, this study reinforces those contributions in the literature which stress a positive influence of quality on innovation ( Singh and Smith, 2004 ). According to the respondents, the three principles of quality positively affect the DDI process connected to new product development, and therefore the relative performance or outputs. While previous study analyses the relationship between quality and innovation in general, this study focuses on specific quality principles and DDI in a high design-intensive industry.

Hence, despite the increasing number of scientific studies in this area, to the authors' knowledge, no qualitative studies have proposed a model including various phases to analyse the DDI process connected to new product development, the role of designers and collaborators and how it relates to quality.

Conclusions

Despite the theoretical ferment with regard to design management in recent years, the related empirical research is still in its infancy. This study has contributed to increasing the theoretical research and empirical evidence in the management literature by investigating the phases of and actors in NPD within DDI by examining the home appliances and furniture industry, one of the most design-intense sectors. This paper aimed to address gaps in the literature by identifying the phases of DDI and the actors involved with designers in the Italian home appliances and furniture sector context. The main findings of this study that contribute to the research area are as follows: (1) the phases of DDI: the company brief, the designer's research, the designer's concept, the design, legal protection, prototyping, production and the market launch; (2) the actors involved in such a process: designers, suppliers, clients/users, universities and education systems, technological centres and creative networks; (3) collaborative design: while designers are strongly involved in all phases of the process, other actors are involved in single phases; and (4) some quality principles could affect positively the DDI process: customer satisfaction/excitement, collaborative leadership and teamwork capacity.

This study reveals several theoretical implications. First, it adds new knowledge to the still unexplored DDI process in the managerial literature by identifying and analysing in detail the phases of such a complex process. This exploratory study suggests a model of clear and distinctive phases, building on empirical research through a sample of companies from the home appliances and furniture sector, a very design-intense sector, which includes the furniture sector and related industries, such as accessories, kitchens and cookware. Few previous studies have explored these phases ( Verganti, 2008 ; de Mozota, 2008 ; Conti, 2018 ; Aydin and Erkarlsan, 2019 ); one suggested three macro-phases and stressed that it is difficult to formalize such a process.

With respect to the above research, this study specifies the steps, starting from the brief of the company, which is not present in all studies, and ending with the market launch; this final phase in not included in previous studies but is very important, as designers should participate in all the phases.

It is quite intuitive that designers have to be part of a team to work under better conditions but that they also need to have the freedom to suggest radical innovations. While confirming that the process is complex and iterative, this study is new and original with respect to the previous contributions, as it offers an original model of the phases of the DDI process and of the actors involved in it through an empirical analysis of the home appliances and furniture sector. All these industries are design-intensive industries, connected to living in the house, and have never been studied together. In this study, we found that the companies in these sectors use the same designers and have similar phases for new product innovation. Few previous studies have analysed the sector in detail. Hence, this study has addressed deficiencies in the existing research.

Third, this study has explored the role of designers and other actors, which is an underinvestigated aspect of DDI process. Beginning with Verganti's (2009) proposed networks of actors in the sociocultural context called design discourse , we add knowledge to this generic scheme by identifying the specific actors involved in the DDIs of the companies in our sample in the home appliances and furniture sector, and explain how these actors participate in the product development. From this study, it is clear that clients and customers among external actors may eventually provide little corrections to products, thus confirming that design is the driving force behind this peculiar nature of innovation, that is, DDI.

Entrepreneurs and top management should provide guidelines and constraints to designers to allow them to create freely and to radically innovate; management should include designers in the personnel of the company, developing a “warm” relationship with them.

It is also strategic to allow designers to participate in all phases of the new product innovation process, until the launch on the market.

The relationship with other actors or interpreters who cooperate in the DDI process should be carefully developed and managed, as other actors also play a strategic role in innovation.

It is important for companies to develop relationships with external creative networks (such as associations of entrepreneurs, design associations and technological centres) even though they may access these areas through designers who are immersed in such external creative networks.

Entrepreneurs and top management should carefully select designers and other interpreters; thus, it is important to develop a culture of design.

It is important to manage and adequately incentivize designers and interpreters and to collect feedback from them.

Quality principles such as customer satisfaction/excitement, participative leadership and teamwork should be encouraged as they may have a positive influence on DDI.

As DDI is strategic for firms and countries, it is crucial for governments to both incentivize this kind of innovation and promote the match of demand with the supply of creativity skills. Local government and associations of entrepreneurs, together with universities and technological centres, should also cooperate to reinforce the culture of design and promote initiatives connected to design, which is a strategic asset of competitiveness and innovation. A better understanding of DDI process and a wider diffusion of this kind of innovation in manufacturing companies have also practical implications for societies. In fact, beautiful and useful design products may contribute to improve the quality of life and social conditions of consumers.

The limitations of this study include its exploratory nature and the small sample of the Italian companies analysed. Further, interviews were conducted only with entrepreneurs, while investigation with other stakeholders is important for better understanding the phenomena.

Agenda for further research

Future research on this topic is recommended. There is a need to better understand the DDI process through qualitative research conducted in different industries and in different countries through the use of the case study method, in-depth interviews and direct observation. In this research, only entrepreneurs and managers were interviewed, but it is crucial to investigate the opinions of designers and all interpreters (e.g. suppliers, technological centres, customers) who cooperate in the innovation process, and also of local government, associations of entrepreneurs, design associations, artists and other relevant parties. Further, longitudinal studies are highly recommended to understand how the relationships between companies and designers and companies and interpreters evolve over time.

Although the empirical research on design is more advanced, there remains a need to investigate the impact of designers and external interpreters on the kind of innovation undertaken and on the business performance. Future research should also analyse whether designer profiles (e.g. gender, age of designer, nationality) affect the output of DDI or business performance.

Last but not least in terms of relevance, we reckon that the relationships between quality principles and design innovation should be better studied, both in terms of managerial aspects and practices.

Model of DDI process of Italian companies in the home appliances and furniture industry

Interview protocol

Socio-demographic characteristics of the companies and example of a design product`

Data on the phases of NPD using DDI

Data concerning actors involved in the DDI process

Data concerning relationship between quality principles and DDI

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International Conference on Management Science and Engineering Management

ICMSEM 2020: Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Management Science and Engineering Management pp 716–730 Cite as

Research on the Influence of Product Design on Purchase Intention Based on Customer Satisfaction

• Mo Chen 19 ,
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• Zhihu Li 19  
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As the concept of “double innovation” is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, consumers will pay more attention to the innovation of products. In order to satisfy consumers’ pursuit of innovation, there are various designs of enterprise products. To explore the influence of product design on purchase intention, the SEM is utilized to carry out an empirical research on the drive and influence of customer engagement on continued purchase intention based on the multi-dimensional product design perspective of functional design, aesthetic design and symbolic design with the introduction of customer satisfaction as a mediator variable. The empirical results show that the function, aesthetic and symbolic dimensions of product design have a significant positive impact on customer satisfaction; customer satisfaction has a significant positive impact on purchase intention; product design function, aesthetics and symbolism directly promote purchase intention effect. When the whole industry is custom-made for furniture, the multi-dimensional perspective research based on customer satisfaction can not only make up for the shortcomings of existing research, but also has certain significance for guiding enterprises to carry out product design practice.

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Chen, M., Chen, J., Li, Z. (2020). Research on the Influence of Product Design on Purchase Intention Based on Customer Satisfaction. In: Xu, J., Duca, G., Ahmed, S., García Márquez, F., Hajiyev, A. (eds) Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Management Science and Engineering Management. ICMSEM 2020. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1190. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49829-0_53

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New product development process and case studies for deep-tech academic research to commercialization

• Pravee Kruachottikul 1 , 2 ,
• Poomsiri Dumrongvute   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0009-7461-5888 3 ,
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This research proposes a new product development (NPD) framework for innovation-driven deep-tech research to commercialization and tested it with three case studies of different exploitation methods. The proposed framework, called Augmented Stage-Gate, integrates the next-generation Agile Stage-Gate development process with lean startup and design thinking approaches. The framework consists of six stages and five gates and focuses on critical thinking to help entrepreneurs avoid psychological traps and make the right decisions. Early activities focus on scouting for potential socioeconomically impactful deep-tech research, developing a business case, market analysis, and strategy for problem–solution fit, and then, moving to a build–measure–learn activity with a validated learning feedback loop. Next, suitable exploitation methods are decided using weight factor analysis, developing intellectual property (IP) strategy, completing the university technology transfer process, and participating in fundraising. To pass each gate, the committee board members, consisting of tech, business, IP and regulatory, and domain experts, will evaluate the passing criteria to decide Go/No-Go. Applying the framework to the case studies results in successful university research commercialization. The model, case study, and lessons learned in this paper can be useful for other deep-tech incubator programs to successfully launch deep-tech research for commercialization. The case studies’ positive outcomes validate the Augmented Stage-Gate framework, yet their success is not entirely guaranteed due to external factors like regulatory constraints, entrepreneur characteristics, timing, and the necessary ecosystem or infrastructure, particularly in emerging markets. These factors should be taken into account for future research purposes.

Introduction

Deep-tech innovation is a new wave of impactful innovation that drives the economy and society. Unlike digital innovations such as mobile apps and digital platforms that disrupted many old-fashioned businesses in past decades, deep-tech is unique, high-value, hard-to-reproduce technological or scientific advances that will improve the technological frontier or disrupt existing solutions and result in socio-economic impacts (De la Tour et al., 2017 ). Deep-tech innovation is usually led by megatrends and unmet needs (Linden & Fenn, 2003 ).

Thailand, a developing country, relies heavily on traditional businesses such as sales, marketing, and services. Thailand’s gross expenditure on R&D (GERD) is lower than that of other middle-to-high income countries. In 2018, Thailand spent 1.11% of gross domestic product (GDP) (182 billion baht) compared with an average of 1.41% for the upper-middle-income group and 2.43% for high income countries. GERD was expected to reach 2% of GPD in 2027 but this was revised to 1.46% due to the COVID-19 pandemic, assuming no new measures to boost R&D investment. Nevertheless, various government policies require stimulus to R&D spending, especially for SMEs and innovation-driven enterprises through the Thai Bay-Dole Act (Office of National Higher Education Science Research and Innovation Policy Council, 2021 ). Therefore, deep-tech innovation applied to Thai businesses could be a potent new driver for its economy. Since most deep-tech originates from academia, researchers, patents, or publications, it is unlikely to be successful and sustainable without real demand from users or direction from the business side. This is because traditional academia focuses heavily on research, publication, and prototype development (Fellnhofer, 2016 ), rather than building a product that is ready for commercial use (Hicks et al., 2009 ). Promoting entrepreneurship, which is a combination of art and process to pursue opportunities and turn into a business regardless of resources, among academia can be helpful to create environments that support innovation development (Barringer & Ireland, 2012 ).

Moreover, many deep-tech innovations require a large amount of funding at the initial stage to build a prototype, perform user validation, and develop a business strategy. Additionally, deep-tech innovation is new, and the industry may not be clear about market needs or potential buyers. Therefore, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is used to understand predictors of human behavior toward potential acceptance or rejection of the technology, particularly technologies related to information and communication technology (ICT) (Lee et al., 2003 ). It can also provide a useful tool to assess the success of new technology introductions and help understand the drivers of acceptance to proactively design interventions targeted at users that may be less inclined to adopt new systems (Venkatesh et al., 2003 ). After validating the market and technology, it is time to decide on commercialization options (Yaldiz & Bailey, 2019 ).

For deep-tech innovation to become successful exploitation from the research ideation stage until commercialization, it requires a product development model suitable for university research initiation and developing market environment. Meanwhile, many pieces of prior research on the NPD model and case studies were primarily conducted based on developed countries where the product development was done within the established company ecosystem (Cocchi et al., 2021 ; Cooper, 2016 ; Cooper & Sommer, 2016 , 2018 ; Salvato & Laplume, 2020 ; Walrave et al., 2022 ; Wuest et al., 2014 ). However, this study highlighted the importance of a specific NPD model in the academic initiative context with low resources and a lack of infrastructure setting, which generally happens within developing countries (Ravi & Janodia, 2022a ). This study is essential to promote deep-tech in Thailand and to help other developing countries that require a new growth potential to drive the economy. Consequently, to accelerate deep-tech innovation in Thailand, the Chulalongkorn University Technology Center (UTC) was established in 2019 as a platform to spring-board academic research to commercialization and facilitate among stakeholders within the ecosystem based on triple helix model, which promotes the way of working that the government, private sector, and academia must collaborate to form a solid, deep-tech innovation ecosystem (Leydesdorff & Etzkowitz, 1998 ) to support manpower, finance, know-how, production facilities, regulation, and sandbox testing in order to expedite the speed of innovation development.

This study uses qualitative research and observation based on the actual case studies of the UTC portfolio research teams. The goal is to understand the pain points, needs, obstacles, and processes required for the successful exploitation of their project and then extract the vital insightful factors for applying to the NPD model, which will be later discussed in the Methods section.

To develop the proposed NPD model, several related NPD studies have been reviewed. Then the next-generation stage-gate development system integrated with agile development, lean startup, and design thinking methods is selected and then applied together with the insights obtained from qualitative research as the NPD model to develop successful business-driven deep-tech innovation. The effectiveness of the model is later tested and confirmed using both experts and observation, which will be later described further in the Results section. This framework, which we call the Augmented Stage-Gate framework, is important for successful innovation and is based on critical thinking. Because human decisions are influenced by the subconscious, it is essential to make decisions based on the results of logical reasoning and avoid psychological traps (Linden & Fenn, 2003 ).

In addition, three case studies are explained and discussed. Applying the Augmented Stage-Gate framework results in successful commercialization process in all three cases where the teams transferred the technology via a spin-off startup with a patent, non-profit use with trade secret, and licensing. The benefits of this study can be used as a framework and case study for successful deep-tech innovation development and commercialization, especially in the context of developing markets and academic research initiation. Several options are proposed and discussed. Finally, the study makes several recommendations for future research, including its application to other vertical deep-tech innovation areas.

Literature review

In this section, the literature on the NPD model, TAM model, and product readiness assessment is discussed. Generally, the NPD model, is a nonlinear and iterative process based on a problem-solving approach that is used for the conception, development, and launch of new products or services. It can help management understand user insights, challenge assumptions, redefine problems, and create innovative solutions to prototype and test with target users to successfully launch in the market. In addition, the NPD process is based on critical thinking, which is the ability to look at events, conditions, or thoughts with a careful eye and make decisions about the reliability and validity of the knowledge according to standards of logic (Seferoglu & Akbiyik, 2006 ). It involves identifying and analyzing informational sources for credibility, indicating previous knowledge, making connections, and deducing conclusions (Thurman, 2009 ). Higher-order thinking ability provides the opportunity to analyze the existing knowledge or situation to correct mistakes and complete deficits to reach correct conclusions (Howard et al., 2015 ). In this study, the authors select Stage-Gate, which is a macro idea-to-launch product development planning process that involves the Go/No-Go decision-making (Cooper & Kleinschmidt, 2001 ), as the baseline NPD framework because the model is easy to understand among stakeholders in a simple linear system format that consists of detailed guidelines for every stage and explains the criteria for management to make a decision whether to allow the development to pass each gate. These unique characteristics of Stage-Gate model strongly fit within the context of our study. While its principles can be applied, the Stage-Gate model, including the number of stages, activities, and gate criteria, has to be adjusted according to our objectives using the insights obtained from this study.

After the core concept of Stage-Gate model was chosen, several modern State-Gate models were reviewed. The next-generation Stage-Gate process that comes with the Triple A system and spiral concept that promotes the development process to be adaptive, flexible, iterative, and accelerated using a feedback loop from user validation (Cooper, 2016 ) can be applied to the model. Furthermore, there was a study of applying Agile project management methods, which highlights a process that is a dynamic planning process that is adaptive and flexible to changes in product development, into a traditional Stage-Gate system, called Agile-Stage-Gate Hybrids. The results looked promising for faster product releases, quicker and better responses to changing customer requirements, and improved team communication and morale (Cooper, 2016 ). Moreover, case studies in manufacturers conducted by R. Cooper in 2018 also supported the earlier finding; yet it also added some challenges in terms of management buy-in, resources needed and allocation, and fluid product definitions and development plans (Cooper & Sommer, 2018 ). These insights are also similar to the study by Zasa et al. ( 2020 ) who highlighted that agile project management will increase interaction among project stakeholders and help break big tasks into small and achievable action items (called sprints ) within a short period of time. They also suggested that successful implementation required the integration between traditional project planning modes and the agile method, cultural change, and perceptions of all stakeholders in the organization (Zasa et al., 2020 ).

Therefore, by applying modern concepts of Stage-Gate like triple A system with spiral concept and agile development, the earlier Stage-Gate baseline model can be improved in many ways. That is, the model becomes more adaptive and flexible to changing customer requirements and situations, increasingly improved team communication and morale, and further highlights on an iterative process to promote interfacing between the development team and the target user. Moreover, the importance of interfacing with users iteratively for business assumption validation is also similar to the principle of lean startup and design thinking. The lean startup encourages startups to challenge business growth hypotheses and use them to build the minimal viable product (MVP), then test and validate with the real user to learn whether it is required to pivot or preserve. This can be repeated many times during the NPD process; an approach called build–measure–learn (Ries, 2011 ). On the other hand, design thinking uses a designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs to what is technologically feasible and a viable business strategy that can be converted into customer value and market opportunity (Brown, 2008 ).

In addition, the TAM can be useful to consider during the NPD process, in particular with ICT-related technologies. It can provide information regarding the probability of success during the introduction of a new technology and the key drivers of user acceptance to enable proactively designed interventions and strategies targeted at populations of users who may not be inclined to adopt new systems (Venkatesh et al., 2003 ).

Lastly, the authors review the study of product readiness assessment. This is important for our context because there is a misalignment issue from different stakeholders when evaluating the readiness of the new product development. This is a typical problem found when the product is not ready for commercial. Yet the team has to communicate readiness level with stakeholders for different purposes such as fundraising, selling, field testing, etc. The first assessment is the technology readiness level (TRL) which was introduced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the 1970s. It is a well-recognized and useful tool to determine the maturity of new technologies. It is also a discipline-independent program that enables more effective assessment and communication. Its nine assessment levels are beneficial to determine the readiness of new technology and/or capability during the technology life cycle, which includes the completion of systems analysis and conceptual design studies, determination from several design options, and decision to start full-scale development (Mankins, 2009 ). Another assessment is the investment readiness level (IRL) proposed by Steve Blank in 2013, which is also divided into nine levels. IRL is used to evaluate how investment-ready a technology is by validating its business model to help investors assess the risk of investment (Blank, 2014 ). Investment readiness can be defined as a set of business development processes that increase business venture readiness as candidates for equity investors (Aernoudt et al., 2007 ). Alternatively, it is the capacity of the business venture to look for external funding, especially from an equity investor, to understand the specific needs required by an investor and be able to give an investor an attractive business proposal with high confidence (European Commission, 2006 ). Entrepreneurs need information and advice on the advantages of raising equity financing, what it means, and how to become investment-ready (Mason & Kwok, 2010 ). In addition, Australia National Investment Council. & Marsden Jacob Associates ( 1995 ) proposed that businesses that are not investment-ready are primarily the result of a lack of information. This means that they do not know about the role of equity finance and are unaware of what is involved in raising money, what is required to attract investors, and how to convincingly express their investment proposals (Australia National Investment Council. & Marsden Jacob Associates., 1995 ).

In this research, the authors use the next-generation stage-gate process as the baseline for the NPD process and then propose the modified NPD framework for new deep technologies that are more suitable for academic research initiation to commercialization in developing markets, called the Augmented Stage-Gate framework. The framework was designed using the insights obtained from in-depth interviews of 19 research teams who had been working on deep tech research and entered the three-month entrepreneurship development program in 2019. The interview was conducted at the end of the program and focused on understanding the pain points in the research-to-commercialization process in terms of entrepreneurship, business development, networking, financial, technology transfer process, progress assessment, and goal. After careful analysis, several recommendations were proposed and integrated into the Augmented Stage-Gate framework as shown in Table 1 .

The Augmented Stage-Gate framework highlights more on the Agile development process, flexible entrepreneurial development program, progress assessment using TRL and IRL, process management specialist to guide along the academic research to commercialization journey and bring in a network of business partners and legal experts to support. Its structure is divided into six stages (innovation ideation, build business case, development, test and validation, launch, and scale-up) with five gates (screening, go to development, go to test, go to commercial, and post-launch review). Here, stage means the process for work to be completed, and gate is for the Go or No-Go decision-making. TRL and IRL assessments, as shown in Table 2 , can be used to evaluate progress in terms of technology and business readiness at each stage.

The Augmented Stage-Gate framework applies the principle of the next-generation Stage-Gate’s triple A system and spiral development, which aims to overcome the typical challenges when handling undefined requirements during initial development, and Agile development, which aims to increase interaction among project stakeholders and help break big tasks into small and achievable action items (Sprints). This is because most customers are uncertain about their needs and so the product definition prior to development is unclear. The triple A model promotes each stage to be adaptive and flexible, agile, and accelerated while the spiral development concept promotes experimentation. This is also similar to what Isaacson ( 2011 ) described Steve Jobs’ philosophy during his development career at Apple that encouraged project teams to fail often, fail quickly, and fail cheaply. With the benefits obtained from the Augmented Stage-Gate core concept, the product design and definition can adapt to new information, customer feedback, and changing conditions along with multiple iterations of validation activities with users or customers throughout the NPD cycle. In addition, it is important to understand that the details of the process and its functions may differ from project to project, especially with deep tech, academic research initiative, and emerging market environment. Therefore, a flexible gating process must be leaner, faster, adaptive, and risk based. Experienced project teams, mentors, and stage-gate committees are also important to guide startup work throughout the NPD process. Additionally, even though the NPD model is represented in a simple linear format, in reality, it is common that each step can be repeated many times and also go back and forth between stages, depending on the readiness, criteria, and requirement to pass each stage.

Then the effectiveness of the Augmented Stage-Gate framework was tested with three cases, to be discussed in Sect. 4. The cases were research teams that joined UTC in 2019 after the new framework had been designed and completed the final stage of the framework by September 2022. The teams were willing to participate in the study. We gathered the information for the cases via observations and interviews.

The authors directly observed the teams as they moved through each stage of the framework. Tangible results such as actual sales, contract execution, regulatory approval, and certifications, were recorded. The authors also had access to relevant documents related to the development process since the teams were required to submit a progress checklist and presentation slides. Information reported (as appropriate to each stage) includes team, research and development progress, regulatory process, business plan, project planning and concept, product design, milestones, risk assessment, technology verification and validation (MVP), market validation, legal activities, IP status, implementation and operations, sales and marketing, and financial activities. These documents were collected and analyzed for the case studies.

In addition to observation, the authors interviewed the stage-gate committees and two or three people from each team (the principal investigator and 1–2 team members). The interviewees were asked to describe the team’s journey, how they applied the Augmented-Stage-Gate framework, and the results they achieved. The interviews also explored any significant challenges encountered during implementation, along with the solutions that the teams developed.

The interviews were recorded and transcribed, with the transcriptions used to create a final summary of the case. The summary was then reviewed and approved by the interviewees. In some cases, we went back to the interviewees multiple times to get additional information or to conduct follow-up interviews when the implementation and results had become clearer.

The Augmented Stage-Gate process of new product development

The proposed Augmented Stage-Gate process, as shown in Fig.  1 , is divided into six stages. In addition, the below detail explains the objective, activity, and criteria to pass the gate of each stage (as also summarized in Table 3 ).

Stage 0: innovation ideation stage. As a technology incubation office, one of the important roles at UTC is to search for impactful deep-tech research in focused areas that potentially impact our way of life and attitudes in all aspects. To achieve this, UTC has been working with various business partners and consultants to gain market insights while studying market research information for mega trends. Using this information, UTC scouts, classifies, and prioritizes potential research projects. After finding candidates, UTC works closely with them through various programs such as boot camp, workshop, and mentoring to develop the entrepreneurial knowledge and skill in order to help conduct an initial business feasibility study. Another advantage is to give entrepreneurs an understanding of the business journey, challenges, and exit plan so that they can prepare themselves with both skills and morale to be ready before launching. Moreover, the entrepreneurial development program is provided in a flexible format both online and offline to suit with the availability of researchers who might have other full-time jobs at the beginning. Usually, the business model canvas (Osterwalder et al., 2005 ), with its nine building blocks template, is used to communicate a firm’s or product’s value proposition, infrastructure, customers, and finances to stakeholders. After completion, the team is ready for the official screening, where the committee board consisting of business, technology, and legal experts will evaluate each research project.

The first step is to identify the target customer and study the user journey to understand the pain points and user insights. Additionally, lead users—advanced users who deal with an individual problem very intensively (von Hippel, 1986 )—are a subset of target users and can be helpful for the research team to test, validate, and gain valuable feedback on the early development product. Like design thinking, the concept starts with understanding the way customers do things and why, their physical and emotional needs, how they think about the world, and what is meaningful to them. This can be done by carefully observing, engaging, watching, and listening to the users and stakeholders, and then crafting a meaningful and actionable problem statement that focuses on the insights and needs (Brown, 2008 ).

The second step is to analyze internal and external market data. This process aims to understand the business environment and will allow us to better plan so that the threats and opportunities associated with the target area of the business are understood. An internal analysis examines factors within the research project and its co-founding team. The preferred analysis is a SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat). Meanwhile, an external analysis examines the wider business environment outside the research project. A popular tool for this is the PESTEL five-force analysis. The key to this process is to ensure that there is market demand to continue the tech-market fit development process.

The third step is to complete an initial financial management strategy, including profit and loss analysis, cash flow planning, and fundraising, that can help the entrepreneur understand the business from a financial perspective in different scenarios and help the business thrive. Because deep-tech product development usually requires a large amount of money and lengthy development time, careful planning in this step is much cheaper regarding business risk. It can avoid cash flow issues that may cause the company to go bankrupt or project delays. Moreover, financial planning can be used to estimate how much investment is needed in each venture development stage so that the entrepreneur can develop a successful fundraising strategy for investors or government grant agencies.

The next step is a preliminary study of the IP landscape. This gives the research project a high-level perspective on the constraints and opportunities regarding the potential exploitation and freedom to operate of IP rights. The researchers can conduct this by themselves or consult with the university IP office since normally the university provides IP support through its Technology Transfer Office (TTO) and IP Practicum Clinic, or by outsourcing services to specialized law firms.

After that, it is time for regulatory planning to help the research team understand and anticipate what regulations are required for each target market. For instance, Med Tech requires FDA (Food and Drug Administration) for commercialization, IRB (Institutional Review Board) for conducting a clinical trial in humans, and GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) for manufacturing medical devices. Meanwhile, the PDPA (Personal Data Protection Act) is required to use personal data. Generally, the university technology office can be a helpful resource for regulatory advice.

Finally, since deep-tech initiates from academic research by nature, the original research team usually consists mainly of tech-savvy people. Therefore, to become a successful venture, it is crucial to find co-founders with business skills to join the team. Business case competitions or networking events within the university ecosystem can help form an organic partnership.

Augmented Stage-Gate framework

Stage 1: build business case stage. The main activity focuses on developing and validating the business model with target users by demonstrating the prototype and then measuring customer satisfaction, interest, or purchase intent. Usually, the prototype in this stage can be nonfunctional and developed based on the concepts of rapid, rough, and right. For example, AI and computer science technology can use UX/UI (user experience and user interface) and wireframe, which is a schematic or blueprint that is useful for thinking and communicating about the software structure among team members, as a prototype to validate the end-to-end solution idea with the user. Moreover, a network of mentors, domain experts, or key opinion leaders, which are mostly university alumni, can be useful resource because they are knowledgeable and experienced, in which they can give truthful advice and validate the solution idea. Another important thing is to interact with real users or customers as early as possible because today users’ roles have become more significant as a new source of innovation than in the past, when innovation was created solely from producers and supplied to consumers via goods and services, as described in Schumpeter’s theory of innovation in 1934 (Schumpeter, 1934 ). By working together, the research team can provide product knowledge, engineering, and manufacturing for innovative users to think and be creative (von Hippel, 1976 ), which means innovators receive an incentive to engage with users to develop innovative designs (Baldwin & von Hippel, 2011 ).

Stage 2: development stage. The main objective in this stage is to develop a workable and functional MVP, validate with the target user, and refine the business model. That is, it aims to improve technology progress and business strategy so that business risk can be reduced. However, it is noted that due to the Agile concept, the startup should target to break the development plan into small and achievable action items so that their hypothesis can be tested and learned often. In addition, validating the MVP in the closest real environment or sandbox, which refers to the environment that allows some players under specific conditions, to enter the market with fewer administrative constraints (e.g., licenses) or legislative requirements (Tsai et al., 2020 ), is recommended to move the MVP and business closer to the commercial version.

Stage 3: test and validation stage. The goal in this stage is to obtain a commercial version of the MVP and business model. To do that, the lean startup’s validated learning concept is applied to this stage because it can show whether the innovation development and business are moving in the correct direction according to the business model. If not, the innovation can be pivoted; a structural course correction to test a new fundamental hypothesis about the product, strategy, and engine of growth. To make the validated learning successful, cause-and-effect questions with actionable and quantitative metrics are essential. After the new features of the MVP are developed, it will be measured with the user to determine if it demonstrates business growth according to the underlying hypothesis, a process can be repeated many times. The benefit of embracing validated learning is to substantially shorten the developmental cycle.

Stage 4: launch stage. The main goal for this stage is to introduce the market of commercial products. The technology development team participates in a build–measure–learn activity to reach the closest version of a commercial product, while the business development team focuses on delivering a commercial final version of the business plan, sales and marketing strategy, IP strategy, regulatory planning, team formation and financial strategy to select the best commercial option with the highest probability of success and return on investment. In addition, if the university IP is used, the team must complete the technology transfer process. Moreover, according to the business model canvas template, this step must ensure that all nine blocks are validated with stakeholders in a way that leads to business growth and the commercial version of the MVP is refined accordingly. The next step is to finalize the IP submission and strategy, consisting of the final IP draft, valuation, and portfolio management, to obtain optimal legal protection and manage the IP effectively. IP valuation, calculated using either cost-based, income-based, or market-based methods, is useful for the entrepreneur to decide on a proper commercialization option and IP valuation for fundraising. Thus, it should be finalized before going to market. Even though IP services can be particularly expensive and time consuming for such early-stage endeavors, the benefit obtained from IP valuation and protection with a well-managed IP strategy generally increases company competitive advantages tremendously after successful exploitation.

The university technology transfer process is an intrinsic part of the technological innovation process. It is the process of conveying results stemming from scientific and technological research to the marketplace and to the wider society along with associated skills and procedures. To achieve a successful technological transfer, many factors must be considered. Souder et al. ( 1990 ) described seven best practices as analytical, facilities, pro-actions, people roles, conditions, technology quality, and organization. Meanwhile, Gorschek et al., ( 2006 ) recommended close cooperation and collaboration between researchers and practitioners. However, both entrepreneurs and tech transfer officers must discuss and plan each option carefully for the benefit of all stakeholders.

After completing the previous steps, it is time to decide on commercialization. Exploiting an innovation is not only about starting a new company, but there are also many other pathways to bring ideas to markets, such as licensing, joint ventures, and M&A (Schaufeld, 2015 ). Thus, to choose which option is suitable, the entrepreneur needs to consider factors such as market opportunity, IP protection, operation risk, time commitment, return on investment, and investment amount. A complete business plan should be developed and carefully verified, so that entrepreneurs can understand the business opportunities and risks in advance. Table 4 shows an example of an option comparison with a weight matrix between spin-offs and licenses. Briefly, the Option A spin-off scores higher than the Option B license, which means it is the more desirable commercial option to an entrepreneur.

Stage 5: scale-up. This activity focuses on collecting and analyzing the feedback obtained after launch, providing newer and better versions of commercial products or business plans using market feedback, and fully penetrating the target market. Several considerations can be analyzed. The first is to assess whether the product is performing according to pre-defined expectations in terms of technical and business aspects such as functionality, revenues, costs, profits, and so on. The second is to check customer satisfaction or anything that affects the company’s value chain, including purchasing raw material, selling the product, and delivering the goods to the customer. Finally, we examine the strengths and weaknesses of the entire NPD process to learn and improve.

Results and discussion

Case studies.

The case studies below highlight the importance of having an NPD framework that is adaptable to deep-tech within university research and emerging market contexts, yet extensive enough to cover all the essential components to transform deep-tech research into an innovation that has a high-fidelity MVP, an accomplished business and market strategy, a clear pathway towards implementation in the real world, and a complete IP strategy and technology transfer process from academia IP.

ReadMe is an artificial intelligence (AI) research project application that began in 2013 to perform Thai object character recognition (OCR) in any scene image, which often has high perspective and distortion error, uneven illumination, and different image resolutions. Additionally, the Thai character structure itself is very difficult to read automatically, particularly using software algorithms, because it consists of a syntactic structure of up to four layers and a strict relationship between words. The research team was conducting research and development internally and working with various industry partners. An e-commerce platform and a railway engineering company were contracted to help understand business demand as well as to improve and optimize the AI model for real-world applications. Nevertheless, after many years the technology remained a research project; early customers did not have purchase intent with a long-term commitment although the Thai OCR reading accuracy was high. Upon applying our Augmented Stage-Gate Framework to ReadMe in 2019, we successfully transformed the deep-tech research into a tech startup named Eikonnex AI ( https://www.eikonnex.ai/ ) that has now secured business deals for commercial use in private companies.

At the screening stage, the project’s potential for exploitation, validity, market feasibility, and technological feasibility was assessed and found to fulfill all the framework’s criteria. ReadMe, a national award-winning research project, was a deep-tech text reader that was in development for six years, had a research prototype proven well in the lab with a TRL of 4 and an IRL of 1, was the state-of-the-art Thai text reader that was more accurate than other better-known OCR technologies, and is a high-potential technology that could impact the business, medical, and transport industries.

Following their selection, the research team carried out innovation framework activities starting with continuous customer validation, that later helped them develop their market research and business plans. A large majority of their customers were banks, driven by the digital transformation trend and strong competition in the financial industry. One of the most challenging and high-volume applications is the personal loan approval credit scoring. Most were unable to automatically read Thai bank statements correctly due to statement template differences from different banks and Thai character challenges, increasing the time required for loan approval. The team saw this opportunity and pivoted their target customer and core technology to become an OCR with automatic template detection to read bank statements instead. After this decision, the team quickly redeveloped their MVP and carried out multiple user validations using the build–measure–learn process. In the meantime, the team worked closely with a network of mentors to adjust and validate the product idea and business plan.

After rigorously applying the framework’s validation activities, the technology underwent a complete transformation and reached commercial readiness. The technology now had a TRL of 7 and an IRL of 7, completed the IP strategy by obtaining a patent for their technique, concluded the technology transfer process, and set up a spin-off tech startup. Moreover, in early 2021 a few months after their establishment as a startup, the company received its first business deal from one of the biggest banks and completed the technology transfer process. Currently, the company is making its first sales by providing Thai document reader solution services either as an API or as a customized technology. They will continue to move towards digital transformation and expand into a coherent document digitization platform.

It is clear that with the support, guidance, and structure provided by the Augmented Stage-Gate Framework as explained in Table 5 , deep-tech research can be transformed into an innovative, high-impact, commercializable product and company in one to two years.

Chest X-ray AI reporter for COVID-19

Following the trend in the use of AI for healthcare, the chest X-ray reporter was an R&D project by physicians and computational researchers that aimed to create AI software that could classify and report abnormalities for physicians to consider as part of their diagnosis. Nonetheless, the technology remained a research project as it lacked a workforce to develop the complete application software and system integration and had no exit strategy.

With the application of our framework and the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the technology met the immediate needs of society by being able to detect COVID-19 and numerous other conditions from chest X-rays. As of the end of 2021, this innovation was used as a not-for-profit technology in the King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital, helping many patients in need.

The technology had a TRL of three and an IRL of one at the time of screening with an alpha version of the AI algorithm. As this project is led by physicians and computational researchers who are experts in the field, it is considered a deep technology with high potential for use in hospitals, especially rural government hospitals that sometimes lack healthcare personnel or technology to analyze chest X-rays efficiently. This innovation may also be adapted for use in other types of X-rays for other diseases and undoubtedly has large potential to improve the accuracy of medical diagnosis. Thus, this research is a good candidate for our Augmented Stage-Gate framework as explained in Table 6 .

Following the development and validation activities of our framework, the research team recruited more AI engineers to develop their algorithms and UX/UI to enable intuitive use of the technology. Here, the code and interface were continuously revised with frequent customer and domain expert validations to select the most relevant features and data for physicians. To protect intellectual property, the technique was kept a trade secret. After using the framework for only one year, the work reached a TRL level of 7 and an IRL level of 7 and gained acceptance for not-for-profit use in the hospital for preliminary screening of COVID-19 and other chest X-ray abnormalities. At present, the innovation is used at Chulalongkorn Hospital. We believe that, with its initial success, the technology can be implemented in other hospitals to help improve patients’ quality of life. The project team is now involved in the process of technology transfer and spin-off.

Progesterone test kit

The progesterone test kit for swine is a medical technology that began with a contracted research project between the Chulalongkorn University Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and a multinational science and technology company. The research team has in-depth knowledge and IP for developing a test kit that can easily test the progesterone level of animals from serum samples. In this research, the industry partner wanted to detect swine progesterone in the form of a strip test as it is a cheap and convenient method for mass adoption. The company promised to license the technology for sales and marketing purposes after the prototype showed promising results.

This research project has a potentially high impact on the local livestock industry. It is a new state-of-the-art technology and is an easy, effective, and low-cost solution that addresses many pain points faced by the swine farm industry. Moreover, we foresaw that the technology could be adapted to detect other hormones and health- or disease-related biomolecules in other livestock, increasing the market size and potential customers in the future. Finally, the initial readiness assessment revealed a TRL of 6 and an IRL of 1.

With our Augmented Stage-Gate framework, as explained in Table 7 , and business directions from the industry partner, the project established its market and business strategy and financial analysis. Moreover, the project team also brought in the qualified diagnostic development (QDD) center of Chulalongkorn University to support strip test design and small-scale manufacturing. Furthermore, with continuous iterations of customer validation, the researchers were able to fit the technology to the user’s needs and better understand the type of collaboration the industry was looking for. Thus, the team had business matching opportunities and discussed plausible deals with potential customers.

After more than 6 months of fine-tuning all aspects of the innovation, the project had a TRL of 7 and an IRL of 7 with a final prototype and licensed their technology to an international company that will use the kit for real-world applications. With the success of their first deal, the team has leverage to make future deals with other private companies.

The Augmented Stage-Gate Framework was used in these cases to validate the potential for exploitation, validity, market feasibility, and technological feasibility. All projects had low levels of investment readiness and different levels of technological readiness at the time of screening but were all considered deep technologies with high potential for use in their respective industries. The framework helped the teams carry out innovation framework activities, including continuous customer validation, market research, and business plans. All projects underwent a complete transformation after rigorously applying the framework’s validation activities, which included developing their MVP, carrying out multiple user validations, and adjusting their product idea and business plan with a network of mentors. In terms of commercial success, ReadMe successfully transformed into a tech startup named Eikonnex AI and secured business deals for commercial use in private companies. Chest X-ray AI Reporter for COVID-19 remained a not-for-profit technology used in King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital to detect COVID-19 and other chest X-ray abnormalities. Progesterone Test Kit licensed their technology to an international company. It is shown that the Augmented Stage-Gate Framework effectively transformed research projects into innovative, high-impact, commercialized products and companies.

Past literature has mentioned that traditional Stage-Gate models are not suitable for many of today’s businesses due to fast-changing user needs, uncertain market requirements (Cooper & Sommer, 2018 ), or industry complexity that requires highly iterative cycles and external collaboration (Sommer et al., 2015) and requires a more flexible and adaptive Stage-Gate model such as integrating agile process (Cocchi et al., 2021 ). Case studies leveraging these models were mostly conducted in corporates in developed economies. Directly adopting successful models from developed countries’ academic institutions require a well-established technology transfer office (Ravi & Janodia, 2022b ). Other studies that focus on the academic context in developing countries made suggestions in the policy level, recommending that the government encourage technology transfer by connecting industry and academia (Kirby & El Hadidi, 2019 ; Ravi & Janodia, 2022b ). None has given practical, step-by-step guideline model for technology initiated from academic institutions like ours.

Therefore, our work provides the first proved example of a new product development model that can be applied in similar contexts—commercializing university technology in an emerging economy. It solves the problems that persist in developing countries, Thailand especially, of lack of literature, lack of evaluation from key stakeholders, and a design-actuality gap (Abbasi et al., 2022 ; Heeks, 2002 ; Kalyanasundaram et al., 2021 ; Ravi & Janodia, 2022a ). However, we believe this model can also be applied to ecosystems with better infrastructure and maturity. Once research can be stably commercialized, building a strong infrastructure for technology transfer office like those in developed countries is a task recommended in the long run.

Lastly, even though the result from these case studies can confirm the validity of the proposed NPD model, it is not a hundred percent guarantee of successful exploitation. There might be other factors or circumstances that can affect the result such as market or technology that is highly regulated by local law, certain requirements of entrepreneur characteristics, appropriate timing for market or technology readiness, ecosystem or infrastructure that is required for research to commercial process, especially in emerging markets that might have no mature standard yet, etc. Those mentioned can be considered for future research.

Theoretical implications

This study develops a modified NPD framework that incorporates agile, lean startup, and design thinking to the Stage-Gate model for effective research to commercialization process generated from within the university in developing markets. Using the proposed Augmented Stage-Gate framework that has six stages (Innovation Ideation, Build Business Case, Development, Test and Validation, Launch, and Scale-up), we have presented three case studies from the Chulalongkorn University Technology Center. The approach is structural and based on critical thinking, which helps the technology incubator to accelerate the idea-to-launch process, decide the Go/No-Go of each innovation project stage to prioritize resource contribution, and reduce the risk of failure. Applying an open innovation concept can be beneficial during the NPD process of exchanging internal and external ideas. For example, introducing market demand to guide the direction of research, bringing in high-quality human resources from outside firms to accelerate the research and development, engaging users or customers to trial the product at an early stage, and co-creating the sandbox area to test and validate the innovation. Nevertheless, the project team must have an open mindset and absorptive capability to capture the value of this approach. In addition, university or business incubators should engage legal experts to supervise each activity to avoid conflicts of interest with external parties.

Managerial implications

The actual journey from idea to launch can be different from project to project. Engaging the Next-generation Stage-Gate’s Triple A System, (Adaptive, Agile and Accelerated) and Agile development to the NPD process is very important. Especially during early stages, each project team should focus on setting up a problem statement and then experimenting to learn and fail early, fast, and cheaply. Additionally, we summarized the key lessons learned during the first few batches of the UTC incubation program. First, the importance of the stage-gate committee role and organization as they are the gatekeepers in deciding the Go/No-Go of each project’s stage. The team needs to understand each project very well and be able to effectively track development progress and milestones. Project management software tools can be helpful in sharing ideas and tracking progress among teams, mentors, and committees whose roles must be considered carefully. Second, the incubator is usually responsible for providing NPD guidelines and mentoring for each stage; yet the incubator must also sometimes play a hands-on role solving issues by working closely with each team, especially for topics that they are unfamiliar with or that are at high risk such as regulatory and IP issues. Third, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic period, many activities were conducted online, such as business matching, mentoring, and customer meetings. Online activities lack many of the emotional and social aspects of work done in person. Therefore, the community manager had to work hard to build a supportive environment, maintain momentum and create positive team dynamics. Still, our experience suggests that it is possible to practice a hybrid onsite/online model while maintaining social distancing during the COVID-19 period. Fourth, legal considerations such as NDAs (Non-disclosure Agreements) and co-founder agreements should be considered as early as possible to avoid any conflicts that could cause project delay or failure. Finally, creating an environment where research, business partners, investors, and mentors can get to know each other is very important. These relationships can be developed informally and can lead to successful business deals. However, tech incubators should be able to identify, understand, and manage the expectations and relationships of each party before organizing networking events so that win–win situations can be realized.

Ideas for future research

Further research on the deep-tech NPD framework applied to specific technologies such as Med Tech that require extraordinary activities or have important limitations is needed. Case studies of successes and failures can be very useful. Challenges involving multiple stakeholders in different development journeys can lead to project failure due to miscommunication, lack of transparency, and a lack of legal knowledge. Thus, integrating legal perspectives and creating legal readiness levels in each NPD journey is essential. Finally, an analysis of co-founder characteristics, such as personality and working style, can suggest suitable ways of commercialization to maximize the probability of success.

Availability of data and materials

Not applicable.

Abbreviations

Artificial intelligence

Food and Drug Administration

Gross domestic product

Gross expenditure on R&D

Good manufacturing practice

• Intellectual property

Institutional review board

Investment readiness level

Minimal viable product

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Non-disclosure agreement

• New product development

Object character recognition

Personal Data Protection Act

Politics, economics, social, technology, environment and legal

Qualified diagnostic development

Strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat

Technology acceptance model

Technology readiness level

Technology transfer office

User interface

Chulalongkorn University Technology Center

User experience

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Eikonnex AI Co., Ltd., Chulalongkorn University Center for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (CU-AIM), Chulalongkorn University Center of Excellence in Swine Reproduction, and Qualified Diagnostic Development (QDD) Center of Chulalongkorn University for assisting the required information and being used in the selected case studies. We would like to express our gratitude to the Second Century Fund (C2F) of Chulalongkorn University and the Program Management Unit for National Competitiveness Enhancement (PMU-C) of The Office of National Higher Education Science Research and Innovation Policy Council (NXPO) to support this research project. Lastly, we would like to thank the staffs of UTC, which now forms a research group called Ignite Innovation Lab.

Second Century Fund (C2F) of Chulalongkorn University and the Program Management Unit for National Competitiveness Enhancement (PMU-C) of The Office of National Higher Education Science Research and Innovation Policy Council (NXPO) to support this research project.

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Pravee Kruachottikul

University Technology Center (UTC), Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, 10330, Thailand

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Poomsiri Dumrongvute

Sasin School of Management, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, 10330, Thailand

Pinnaree Tea-makorn

Faculty of Accounting and Commerce, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, 10330, Thailand

Santhaya Kittikowit

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PK, PD, and SK conceived the concept of new product development and entrepreneurship for academic research and technology transfer. PT wrote the manuscript. AA collected data from each research team and the publication templating.

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Kruachottikul, P., Dumrongvute, P., Tea-makorn, P. et al. New product development process and case studies for deep-tech academic research to commercialization. J Innov Entrep 12 , 48 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13731-023-00311-1

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Williams, Timothy. "Product ecosystems: Extrinsic value in product design." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2019. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/132602/1/Timothy_Williams_Thesis.pdf.

Nair, Jayraj. "User driven product innovation." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/43095.

Ngo, Peter. "Surveying trends in analogy-inspired product innovation." Thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1853/51891.

Manning, Jeffrey (Jeffrey W. ). "Innovation trap : can your innovation strategy cripple your product development?" Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/44691.

Venkatraman, Rajagopal. "Role of design service firms in product innovation." Digital WPI, 2006. https://digitalcommons.wpi.edu/etd-theses/4.

Venkatraman, Rajagopal. "Role of design service firms in product innovation." Link to electronic thesis, 2005. http://www.wpi.edu/Pubs/ETD/Available/etd-010406-181802/.

Fulkerson, Sarah (Sarah Hampton) 1969, and Anna 1969 Halpern-Lande. "Product design and innovation : exploring breakthrough products (breakthroughs : a method and a madness)." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/9619.

Davis, Kara, Pinar Öncel, and Qingqing Yang. "An Innovation Approach for Sustainable Product and Product-Service System Development." Thesis, Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, Sektionen för ingenjörsvetenskap, 2010. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:bth-2023.

Ferruz, Gracia Pedro Pablo. "PRODUCT DESIGN, DEVELOPMENTAND VIABILITY ANALYSIS : MOTORCYCLE HELMETLIGHT SECURITY SYSTEM “DragonFlight”." Thesis, Mälardalens högskola, Akademin för innovation, design och teknik, 2015. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-28702.

Clausson, Leif. "Business Innovation by utilizing Engineering Design Theory and Methodology." Doctoral thesis, KTH, Skolan för industriell teknik och management (ITM), 2006. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-3857.

López, Avila Luis Armando. "Incorporating the innovation process in a product development organization." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/90717.

Ondra, Martin. "Brand Identity in Design of Industrial Product." Doctoral thesis, Vysoké učení technické v Brně. Fakulta strojního inženýrství, 2017. http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-364820.

Iqbal, Asif S. M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "A study of open innovation and its applications to product design." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/100309.

Revelos, Alex D. "The evolution of radiology through product and process innovation." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/107367.

Jabeen, Sadia. "Managing aesthetics as open innovation practice : The case study of color and design choice for designed technical product." Thesis, Högskolan i Gävle, Avdelningen för Industriell utveckling, IT och Samhällsbyggnad, 2010. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-8056.

Järlehag, Ella. "The Social Bench : Interactive product design for public space." Thesis, Luleå tekniska universitet, Institutionen för ekonomi, teknik och samhälle, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:ltu:diva-71395.

Kondabolu, Venkatagiri. "Evaluation of Factors for Outsourcing Innovation to Suppliers under Conditions of High Turbulence." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1343400814.

Akin, Tugce. "Communication Of Smart Materials: Bridging The Gap Between Material Innovation And Product Design." Master's thesis, METU, 2009. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12610999/index.pdf.

Ge, Weihua. "Sweden in the Box : Product designfor promoting Swedish culture to Chinese people." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för design (DE), 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-57848.

Khan, Muhammad Sharjeel. "The construction of a model for lean product development." Thesis, Cranfield University, 2012. http://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/handle/1826/8043.

Ruvald, Ryan. "Prototyping for Product-Service Systems innovation : Insights from the construction equipment industry." Licentiate thesis, Karlskrona, 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:bth-18964.

Runling, André. "Evar : En produktutveckling och formgivning av cykelbelysning med LED som ljuskälla." Thesis, Karlstads universitet, Avdelningen för maskin- och materialteknik, 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-26576.

Abdullah, Muhammad Firdaus Abong. "Innovation of product modularity development through the integration of a formal Industrial Design framework." Thesis, Loughborough University, 2015. https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/18670.

Burke, James Brian. "Evolution of the entrepreneurial firm : product strategy and organizational design /." Thesis, Cambridge, Mass, 1996. http://www.gbv.de/dms/zbw/527372560.pdf.

Rusteberg, Ina, and Esra Öcüt. "Automatiskt roterande tårtfat." Thesis, KTH, Hållbar produktionsutveckling (ML), 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-299847.

Hussain, Romana. "System-in-use methodology : a methodology to generate conceptual PSS (Product-Service Systems) and conventional designs using systems-in-use data." Thesis, Cranfield University, 2013. http://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/handle/1826/8262.

Tawakkoli, Sammy-Sebastian, and Leo Ekbom. "Longboards." Thesis, Karlstad University, Division for Engineering Sciences, Physics and Mathematics, 2008. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-1867.

”Longboards” är ett examensarbete utfört av Leo Ekbom och Sammy-Sebastian Tawakkoli för innovations- och designingejörsprogrammet vid fakulteten för teknik och naturvetenskap på Karlstads Universitet. Uppdragsgivaren är Space Production AB, projektägare är Dan Edanius, art director och projektledare på företaget. Ett av företagets projekt var våren 2008 att producera Slalom Skateboarding VM och med anknytning till detta växte ett examensarbete fram.

Space Production AB började som ett montersnickeri men har idag utvecklats till ett företag som driver fullständiga utställnings- och eventprojekt. Företaget tillhandahåller allt från idéskiss till montering och servning även då huvudsysslan ligger i att producera, installera och lagra utformning från annan part.

Uppgiften var att ta fram en produktserie innehållande tre modeller av longbaords med bred spridning. Produkterna skulle vara unika och nischade men ändå säljbara och tillhöra ett övre segment av marknaden. Därtill gavs lite friare händer i att ta fram en rad vilda koncept som idébank för senare projekt.

Genom en djupgående researchfas, där information rörande materialkunskap, marknad, målgrupper och kultur, mynnade projektet ut i en kreativ designprocess. Målgruppsanalysen lade grunden till en rad referenskunder vars behov inspirerade och analyserades. Två skilda idegenereringstillfällen lade grunden till en kategorisering där åtta starka koncept presenterades för en sammansatt styrgrupp.

Arbetet resulterade i tre längre utvecklade koncept vilka har potential att bredda den befintliga marknaden för longboard försäljning samt en idébank för framtida utveckling av produkter.

”Longboards” is a degree project in the Innovations- and design engineering program at Karlstad University. The job requestor is Space Production AB with Dan Edanius, Art director and senior project manager, as the project owner.

Space Production AB started out as a showcase carpentry company but has today evolved into a company that operates complete exhibitions and events. The company’s main business is to produce, install and store branded environments designed by another party but also supplies everything from idea sketches to assemblage and service. One of Space projects spring 2008 was the production of Slalom Skateboarding World Championships and it was through this a degree project was created.

The task was to create a diverse product line containing three models of longboards. The products would be unique and aimed at a niche market but yet be sellable and appeal to the upper segment buyer. Further the opportunity to create more wild concepts that could be used in future projects was given. 

An extensive research on materials, market, target group and culture, resulted in a creative design process. Through a target group analysis a number of reference consumers were created. Their needs worked as inspiration and was analysed. Two separate sessions of idea generating were the fundament of a categorization that eventually resulted in eight strong concepts that was presented to the management group.

The project has resulted in three developed concepts that could potentially broaden the existing longboard market as well as a band of ideas that could be used for inspiration of future projects.

Chen, Jiayao. "Cultural DNA and Product Innovation: A Guideline of Establishing and Utilizing Cultural DNA Banks." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin155421172489759.

Eriksson, Siw. "The Mediating Role of Product Representations; A Study with Three-Dimensional Textiles in Early Phases of Innovation." Licentiate thesis, Högskolan i Borås, Institutionen Textilhögskolan, 2014. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hb:diva-3718.

Löfqvist, Lars. "Product innovation in small established enterprises : Managing processes and resource scarcity." Doctoral thesis, KTH, Industriell ekonomi och organisation (Inst.), 2014. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-139064.

QC 20140102

Davidsson, Mikael, and Andreas Gustafsson. "Designstudie av beställningsautomat : anpassad för drive through." Thesis, Mälardalen University, Department of Innovation, Design and Product Development, 2007. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-302.

Rapporten Designstudie av beställningsautomat -anpassad för drive through- behandlar

arbetet från produktutveckling till modellframställning. Den uppgift som gruppen tagit sig an

gäller utveckling och design av en automat anpassad för användning i en drive through. Hela

arbetet är ett examensarbete inom Produkt och Processutveckling (kurskod: KN1060) vid

Institutionen för Design och Produktutveckling på Mälardalens högskola.

Produktutvecklingen gäller en automat anpassad för användning i en drive through, i

produktutvecklingen ingår val av material, produktionsmetod, utformning samt

konceptmodeller. Arbetet har utförts med en funktionsanalys och intervjuer som grund.

Utifrån dessa dokument har sedan flertalet koncept kunnat utvecklas. Med stöd av ett antal

utvecklingsverktyg har ett urval kunnat göras för att slutligen mynna ut i ett enda slutgiltigt

Jämförelser och urval av koncept har genomförts med hjälp av ett antal utvecklingsverktyg;

QFD-analys (Quality Function Deployment), FMEA-analys (Failure Mode Effect Analysis)

och Pugh-matris. Dessa verktyg har även varit till stor hjälp när det kom till att kvalitetssäkra

arbetet. Under arbetets gång har en nära dialog med handledare förts för att säkerställa att

arbetsprocessen flutit i rätt riktning.

Resultatet av detta arbete blev en modell i skala 1:4 som visar vilket utseende automaten får

och vilka funktioner den kan ha. Modellen visar inte hur programvaran kommer att fungera.

Den andra delen av resultatet är själva arbetet i sig som visar på hur produkten kan förenkla

beställningen för användaren samt avlasta restaurangpersonalens arbete.

För fortsatt arbete med detta projekt bör ytterligare undersökningar och djupare

konstruktionsarbete genomföras. I det djupare konstruktionsarbetet bör elektronikkonstruktion

tas med i beräkningarna. Det bör också läggas ner mycket tid på att utveckla programvaran så

att den underlättar beställningar för såväl restaurangkund som personal.

Burgman, Peter, and Daniel Eriksson. "Mobilomat : Designstudie av en offentlig laddare till portabla enheter." Thesis, Mälardalen University, Department of Innovation, Design and Product Development, 2007. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-501.

Detta examensarbete är genererat på egen hand av projektets deltagare. Arbetet avser att frambringa ett förslag på hur en offentlig laddare kan utformas med kartläggning av dess teknik. Produkten riktar sig främst för laddning av mobiltelefoner men ska också fungera till andra energiförsörjande portabla enheter som, mindre datorer, musikspelare samt kameror.

Examensarbetet är inom området, produkt- och processutveckling vid institutionen Innovation Design och Produktutveckling på Mälardalens högskola.

Projektet omfattar en förstudie med analyser av befintliga produkter på marknaden gällande design, teknik och funktion. Förstudien omfattar också resultatet av en personundersökning för att utforska om det finns ett behov av en sådan produkt på den svenska marknaden samt för att ge inspiration hur den kan utformas. Vi har också tagit del av lämpliga litteraturstudier för att skapa en trovärdighet till läsaren och som stöd för vårt arbete.

Med denna förstudie i beaktning inleddes en konceptutveckling med ett omfattande skissarbete som sedan fördes över till cad-modeller med hjälp av programmet Solid Works. Därefter har ett vinnande koncept tagits fram och vidareutvecklats med hjälp av lämpliga utvecklings- och värderings metoder som Pughs matris, QFD samt FMEA.Denna rapport är skriven i kronologisk ordning med en slutlig presentation av resultatet. Produkten presenteras med verklighetsbaserade bilder som renderats i 3DsMax med produktens ritningar som underlag.

Da, costa Amélie. "Mise en place d'une méthodologie pour l'évaluation par des clients de produits innovants au cours de leur conception. Application à l'intégration d'innovations dans le domaine automobile." Thesis, Paris, AgroParisTech, 2014. http://www.theses.fr/2014AGPT0030.

Lake, Eric M. "Mapping the process of product innovation : contextualising the 'black box' of computer and video games design." Thesis, Cranfield University, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/1826/4154.

Hedberg, Emil, and Jonas Andersson. "Produktutveckling av musikinstrument för personer med nedsatt rörelseförmåga i händer och/eller armar." Thesis, Mälardalen University, School of Innovation, Design and Engineering, 2010. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-9546.

I denna rapport kommer du som läsare kunna ta del av en redogörelse över det arbete som den undertecknade gruppen har utfört i kursen KPP305, Examensarbete produktutveckling, 30hp. Detta arbete har sin grund från en tidigare läst kurs, på Mälardalens Högskola, som gick under namnet Industridesign 2. Under denna kurs utdelades en uppgift som bestod i att ”möjliggöra musicerande för funktionshindrade”, och gruppen tog därmed fram ett visuellt koncept över ett fotanpassat instrument för människor med rörelsehinder i överkroppen. Detta examensarbete kan ses som en fortsättning på den just nämnda uppgiften.

Under hela projektet har gruppen haft en nära dialog tillsammans med människor som befinner sig inom berörande branscher såsom instrumentbyggare, reumatiker, funktionshindrade med flera. En annan person som även varit till stor hjälp under projektet är gruppens handledare, Jan Frohm, som funnits där med tips och fungerat som ett bollplank vad gäller idéer och tankar gruppen haft angående projektet.

Målet med examensarbetet var att fortsätta det arbete gruppen åstadkommit i tidigare kurs och på så vis komma fram till en slutgiltig lösning till detta. Anledningen till att gruppen valde att fortsätta arbeta med detta projekt var att de fann det viktigt att alla människor, oavsett funktions‐ eller rörelsehinder skall ha möjligheten att musicera.

Gruppen har med en omfattande research, kontakter, ett antal avgörande intervjuer och ett flertal olika produktutvecklingsverktyg kommit fram till en lösning som svarar upp till det problem gruppen från början ställt upp. Projektet resulterade i en framtagen prototyp över ett instrument, som gruppen valt att kalla för Funkinstrument (instrument för funktionshindrade), som är ämnat för människor som lider av någon form av rörelsehinder i armar/händer, eller lider av reumatism. Gruppen själva är väldigt nöjda över hur resultatet utmynnade, samt över sin insats i detta examensarbete.

In this report, you as a reader will be able to take note of a statement of the work the group has performed in the course KPP305, Examensarbete i Produktutveckling (Master Thesis Work in Product development), 30hp. This work is based on an assignment from an earlier course, at Mälardalen University, known as Industridesign 2 (Industrial design 2nd). During this course the group was awarded a task which was to "give disabled people the opportunity to make music”, and the group thus developed a visual concept over an instrument which was custom made for people with disabilities in their upper body. This thesis can be seen as a continuation of the justmentioned task.

The group has through the whole project had close dialogue to people in different industries, such as people from disability associations, instrument makers, rheumatics and disabled people with several. Someone else who also been very helpful during the project is the group's supervisor, Jan Frohm, ho been there with advice and acted as a sounding board to the ideas and thoughts the group had about the project.

 The objective of the project was to continue the work which the group achieved in previous course, and thus arrive at a definitive solution to it. The reason why the group chose to continue working on this project was that they found it important that all people, regardless of functional or physical disabilities must have the ability to make music.

The group has through an extensive research, contacts, a number of key interviews and a variety of tools for product development been able to come up with a solution that meets up to the problems which was set in the beginning of the project. The project resulted in a prototype of an instrument, which the group decided to call for Funkinstrument , which is intended for people who suffer from some form of disability in the arms and/or hands, or suffer from rheumatism. The group itself is very pleased with the outcome of the project, and of its efforts in this thesis.

De, Goey Heleen. "Exploring design-driven innovation : A study on value creation by SMEs in the Swedish wood products industry." Licentiate thesis, Tekniska Högskolan, Högskolan i Jönköping, JTH, Industriell organisation och produktion, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-36129.

Lilja, Erik. "Poka-yoke design of rubber rail for holding and transversal sealing of packages." Thesis, Karlstads universitet, Fakulteten för hälsa, natur- och teknikvetenskap (from 2013), 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-68052.

Järåsen, Lina, and Helena Westberg. "Nästa generations ryggskydd." Thesis, Karlstad University, Division for Engineering Sciences, Physics and Mathematics, 2007. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-1164.

”Nästa generations ryggskydd” är ett examensarbete vid Innovations- och designingenjörsprogrammet på Karlstads Universitet. Uppdragsgivaren är Stefan Ytterborn på POC Sweden i Stockholm.

POC är ett företag som satsar på att utveckla ny och effektiv skyddsutrustning till alpinskidåkare för att förhindra allvarliga skador. Då utrustningen och åkstilen ständigt blir mer extrem måste även skyddsutrustningen utvecklas för att ge så bra och smidigt skydd som möjligt.

Uppdraget har gått ut på att ta fram en produkt eller metod som skyddar ryggen vid alpin skidåkning. Denna problemformulering har varit väldigt öppen och gett en hel del spelrum vid idégenerering och produktframtagning.

Examensarbetet resulterade i en produkt som skyddar ryggen mot den nuförtiden mer frekventa skadeformen, kompressionsskador. Att det inte finns några befintliga skydd mot dessa skador på marknaden har gjort att researcharbetet har blivit en stor del i projektet.

”The next generation of spine protection” is a degree project in the Innovation and design engineering program at the University of Karlstad. The employer is Stefan Ytterborn at POC Sweden in Stockholm.

POC is a company that works towards developing new and efficient protection for alpine skiers to prevent serious injuries. Both the equipment and the way people ski are getting more and more extreme and therefore new protection must be developed to offer as good and flexible protection as possible.

The assignment has been to develop a product or method to protect the spine at alpine skiing. Due to the openness of the problem there has been a lot of scope during the idea generating and product developing phase.

This degree project has resulted in a product that protects the spine against the increasingly frequent damage, the compression injury. Due to the lack of existing protection against these types of damages on the market the research phase has been a big part of the project.

Lorentz, Romain. "Formalisation d'un modèle de conception et d'innovation dans le domaine des bio-industries : cas des particules d'argile." Thesis, Paris, ENSAM, 2014. http://www.theses.fr/2014ENAM0039/document.

Schulte, Jesko. "Sustainability Risk Management in Product Development Companies - Motivating Change." Licentiate thesis, Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, Institutionen för strategisk hållbar utveckling, 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:bth-17631.

Rianantsoa, Ndrianarilala. "Strategical and multidisciplinary steering of aeronautical projects on the basis of shared value model and innovation process." Phd thesis, Ecole Centrale Paris, 2012. http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00740652.

Doherty, Rohan T. "From styling to strategy : transforming an Australian manufacturing SME's perception of design." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2014. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/77910/1/Rohan_Doherty_Thesis.pdf.

Kolosov, Dmitry S. M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Impact of communications between firms on innovation and new product development : the case of the Cambridge/Boston biotech cluster." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/67558.

JUNGE, VARENA. "Product development in the transitioning German energy market: Introducing an integrative innovation process with eco-design and strategic foresight. : Process model and implications for the technical product development unit of WEMAG." Thesis, KTH, Industriell ekologi, 2014. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-158049.

Rosa, Maiara. "Characterizing design thinking towards integration with product-service system development process." Universidade de São Paulo, 2017. http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/18/18156/tde-08032017-104519/.

Rocchi, Simona. "Enhancing sustainable innovation by design : an approach to the co-creation of economic, social and environmental value = Duurzame innovatie : co-creatie in het ontwerp van product-dienstcombinaties /." Rotterdam : Rotterdam : Erasmus Universiteit ; Erasmus University Rotterdam [Host], 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/1765/7133.

Brown, Ingi. "Entre firme et usagers : des biens génératifs d’usages.Théorie des biens comme espaces de conception." Thesis, Paris, ENMP, 2013. http://www.theses.fr/2013ENMP0001/document.

Hernandez-Pardo, Ricardo. "Designing sustainable product service systems : a business framework for SME implementation." Thesis, Loughborough University, 2012. https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/11001.

"Product design innovation centre." 1999. http://library.cuhk.edu.hk/record=b5890215.

Wu, Hui-hua, and 吳繪華. "Product Design by Customer-driven Innovation Product Design by Customer-driven Innovation Through TRIZ." Thesis, 2006. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/32840091553457520475.

United States Mint Opens Sales for Alabama American Innovation $1 Coin™ Products on April 8

Washington, DC, April 01, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The United States Mint (Mint) will open sales for rolls and bags containing the second American Innovation $1 Coin of 2024 on April 8 at noon EDT. The reverse (tails) design of the coins in these products recognizes innovation from the State of Alabama.  The following packaging options from the Mint’s facilities at Philadelphia and Denver will be available:  

“I am pleased to announce the release of the American Innovation $1 Coin for the State of Alabama,” said the Honorable Ventris C. Gibson, Director of the Mint.  “The Saturn V rocket, designed and built at the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama was initially developed to support the Apollo program for human exploration of the Moon.  We are honored to celebrate this major achievement with this coin.”

“Alabama is a state of innovators, and the Saturn V rocket perfectly exemplifies that.  It was Alabamians who helped put man on the moon, and today, we remain committed to ensuring our country is not only on the forefront of space exploration, but innovation in all areas,” said Alabama Governor Kay Ivey.  “We are proud to now see the Saturn V rocket displayed on this coin and are honored to have Alabama and her people represented in this special, commemorative way.”

To set up a REMIND ME alert for the Alabama American Innovation $1 Coin product options, visit the product detail page.  Orders are limited to 10 items of each product per household for the first 24 hours of sales.

Introduced in 2018, the American Innovation ® $1 Coin Program is a multi-year series featuring distinctive reverse (tails) designs that pay homage to America’s ingenuity and celebrate the pioneering efforts of individuals or groups from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Territories.

The Alabama American Innovation $1 Coin reverse design depicts the power and force of the Saturn V rocket lifting off with the Moon in the background.  Inscriptions are “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,” “SATURN V,” and “ALABAMA.”  United States Mint Medallic Artist Craig A. Campbell designed and sculpted the image.

The obverse (heads) of all coins in the American Innovation $1 Coin Program features a dramatic representation of the Statue of Liberty in profile with the inscriptions “IN GOD WE TRUST” and “$1.”  The design also includes a privy mark of a stylized gear, representing industry and innovation.  Mint Artistic Infusion Program (AIP) Designer Justin Kunz created the design, which Mint Medallic Artist Phebe Hemphill sculpted.

Incused on the coin’s edge are “2024,” the mint mark, and “E PLURIBUS UNUM.”

American Innovation $1 Coins are included in the Mint’s Product Subscription Program. Structured like a magazine subscription, this program affords customers the convenience of signing up to receive automatic shipments of products in a series.  The shipments continue until the subscription is cancelled.  For details, visit Product Subscription Program.

Additional American Innovation $1 Coin products are available at https://catalog.usmint.gov/coins/coin-programs/american-innovation-dollar-coins/.

About the United States Mint

Congress created the United States Mint in 1792, and the Mint became part of the Department of the Treasury in 1873.  As the Nation’s sole manufacturer of legal tender coinage, the Mint is responsible for producing circulating coinage for the Nation to conduct its trade and commerce.  The Mint also produces numismatic products, including proof, uncirculated, and commemorative coins; Congressional Gold Medals; silver and bronze medals; and silver and gold bullion coins.  Its numismatic programs are self-sustaining and operate at no cost to taxpayers.

Note:  To ensure that all members of the public have fair and equal access to United States Mint products, the United States Mint will not accept and will not honor orders placed prior to the official on-sale date of April 8, 2024, at noon EDT.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

• Visit https://www.usmint.gov/news/image-library/american-innovation-dollar to view images of the Alabama American Innovation $1 Coin. 
• Visit usmint.gov/about for information about the United States Mint.
• Visit and subscribe to the United States Mint YouTube channel to view videos about the Mint.
• Visit usmint.gov/email-signup to subscribe to United States Mint electronic product notifications, news releases, public statements, and the monthly educational newsletter, Lessons That Make Cents .
• Sign up for United States Mint RSS Feeds and follow us on Facebook, X, and Instagram.

 United States Mint – Connecting America through Coins

• Alabama American Innovation $1 Coin

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