Exploring Collaborative Practices Between SMEs and Designers in the Italian Furniture Industry

Design has recently gained substantial attention among practitioners and scholars as a source of innovation. In contemporary business and academia, design is increasingly viewed as an important strategic asset. Moreover, the role of design and designers in generating value is growing in relevance to the point that they can be considered part of inbound open innovation strategies. Indeed, managing designers through open innovation processes is becoming particularly important for companies in several industries. This chapter aims to investigate the influence of the practices adopted by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in collaboration with external designers on the relationship between design investments and competitive performance. In doing that, the research focuses on the Italian furniture industry as empirical setting. The reason for this selection is twofold. First, because more than 95% of Italian furniture companies are small and medium-sized. Second, many Italian furniture companies collaborate with several external designers to the point that over 80% of the product portfolio is on average conceived by external designers. Analyzing the results coming from a survey conducted on SMEs of the furniture industry, different collaborative practices have been explored. In particular, the effect that three different design management approaches, named Styling, Thinking, and Meaning, have on SME performance as a result of collaborations with external designers is highlighted.