Editor’s note

Citation

Kumar, V. (2009), "Editor’s note", Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 30 No. 2/3. https://doi.org/10.1108/jbs.2009.28830baa.001

Editor’s note

Article Type: Editor’s note From: Journal of Business Strategy, Volume 30, Issue 2/3

Almost every professional magazine, journal, conference, and meeting room is awash with the term “design innovation”. There is a great deal of energetic discussion about why design innovation has become critical for the success and growth of businesses today. Experts in business management are discussing ways to think about design as a key strategic advantage. Many of these discussions promise to “fire up creativity,” “master design thinking,” and “disrupt the competition.” Design innovation has arrived, and it has made a huge splash in the world of business.

Except that it has not. Despite the fact that there is much talk about the strategic value of design innovation, very few innovators clearly know “how” to practice this kind of innovation repeatedly and reliably. Design processes are still largely unfamiliar in business. Yet businesses need to master these processes, methods, tools, and frameworks in order to truly harness the power of design innovation.

How businesses can practice innovation through a deep understanding of the design process is the focus of this special edition of the Journal of Business Strategy. For rich, diverse perspectives, I have brought together experts from many fields to discuss how design innovation can be successfully practiced through adopting formalized design processes. The papers come from innovators in fields as diverse as healthcare, digital products, software, telecommunications, space planning, web services, city planning, and education.

Four of the papers focus on innovation cases in specific practice areas such as healthcare facilities, healthcare services, city planning, and web development. The authors describe how design processes can be applied to these cases to ensure the successful uptake of innovations.

Innovation by practice area: four views

1. 1.

   Hospital system – user-centered communications, Uehira and Kay.

2. 2.

   Healthcare service – patient-centered services, Duncan and Breslin.

3. 3.

   City – people-centered civic facilities, Buschmann and Coletta.

4. 4.

   Web site – principles for web services, Schauer.

Healthcare settings offer huge opportunities for people-centered innovations. Reframing the design of healthcare facilities to transform user experiences is a topic not sufficiently explored. Prudent application of design processes, using a rigorous set of methods, tools, and frameworks, can produce transformative experiences in hospitals, clinics and other healthcare facilities. Taisuke Uehira and Carl Kay of Daishinsha, a Japan-based marketing consulting firm, show this through a case study in furniture systems in Japanese hospitals. They write about how qualitative research methods can allow product development and sales teams to accelerate learning and the pace of innovation.

Understanding and using design processes in health services will allow healthcare organizations to pay more attention to patient needs and provide better patient experience. Dr Alan Duncan and Margaret Breslin of the SPARC Innovation Program at Mayo Clinic illustrate how design processes can help designers, business strategists, healthcare professionals, and patients work together to develop innovations for high-value care experiences.

In a very different area of practice, Kristian Buschmann and Carol Coletta of CEOs for Cities describe how they apply design processes to create people-centered civic experiences in cities. Their paper explores how CEOs for Cities and students from the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Institute of Design took a fresh look at how cities can better serve families and solve problems of suburban flight. And, working in a fourth area, Brandon Schauer of the digital experience firm Adaptive Path proposes four “breakthrough mindsets” his company sees being used for design innovation in web services and suggests ways these mindsets might apply in other practice areas.

Four other papers, from creative leaders in four global technology companies (HP, Microsoft, Motorola and SAP), focus on methods and frameworks for creating an organizational culture conducive to design innovation.

Innovating the organization: four views

1. 1.

   Design innovation and corporate culture – technology planning, Sato.

2. 2.

   Design thinking and prototyping culture – enterprise software, Holloway.

3. 3.

   Design innovation and development process –software systems, Bernard.

4. 4.

   Design methods and product definition – portfolio planning, Joh and Mayfield.

Steve Sato of HP examines how methods for “design thinking,” defined as a systematic approach for optimizing customer value and corporate value, can help companies integrate innovation efforts across functions and development stages. In a similar vein, Matthew Holloway of SAP’s Design Services Team tells us about how his company applies design thinking methods to craft corporate strategies that are more in tune with core competencies and thus easier to execute. Chris Bernard at Microsoft describes how that company is creating a corporate culture of design innovation, including leveraging its own software tools for streamlining internal development processes. In addition Jooyun Melanie Joh and Matt Mayfield from Motorola tell us about their work building a repeatable, reliable process of early product definition and product discovery.

Finally, three other papers in this issue look at design innovation in terms of generic frameworks and strategies that apply across practice areas and types of organizations.

Generic innovation frameworks: three views

1. 1.

   Generic strategy – design innovation capabilities, Ward, Runcie and Morris.

2. 2.

   Generic strategy – design thinking and fitness, Hackett.

3. 3.

   Generic strategy – design innovation practice, Kumar.

Antonia Ward, Ellie Runcie and Lesley Morris of the Design Council UK provide case studies of how that organization helps small businesses embed design innovation capabilities into their strategy, brand identity, products and services, and culture. James Hackett, CEO and President of leading office furniture manufacturer Steelcase, describes his company’s evolving concept of business strategy as “fitness”, and how systems and processes for sustaining fitness can come from frameworks for design thinking. Finally, my own paper provides an overview of four general principles that guide successful innovation, and in particular the design processes, methods and frameworks that can guide innovation practice.

Vijay Kumar