Benefit N°six: design driven innovation/radical research
Designer's contributions to business and society include user-centered design and styling which are important for incremental innovation.
How can you discover, what a user really needs and wants – what his unarticulated wishes really are? 'Go out and ask the user!' might not lead to the right answers. If Henry Ford had done this, people would have answered: 'we want faster horses' – but a disruptive innovation like the mass-produced automobile, the smartphone or the digital camera won't come to the world by asking the user. A disruptive innovation exceeds the expectation of the user, it is something people didn't realize they wanted, until they see it. These innovations create new markets for products and services and thereby disrupt existing markets. Design Research gets to the heart of what people value, it is a path to discover those unarticulated needs by critically examining theoretical, historical, philosophical, and social issues related to the field of exploration.
'Radical researchers are experts, who envision and investigate new product meanings through a broader, in-depth exploration of the evolution of society, culture, and technology.'
Roberto Verganti, professor of the management of innovation at Polytechnic University of Milan. Excerpted from Design-Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean. Harvard Business Press.
source: designdriveninnovation.com
According to Roberto Verganti, radical research...
- requires relentless exploration of one vision
- values knowledge and scholarship
- challenges an existing paradigm with a specific vision around which to converge
- is intrinsically visionary and built on the researcher's personal culture.
The researcher takes on a broader perspective and closely examines evolution and Trends in culture, society and technology. He creates a vision about possible new product meanings that are 'in the air' and that people eventually are just waiting or getting ready for.