IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/22002.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Harnessing the 'essential tension' of design: The complex relationship between the firm and designer consultants

Author

Listed:
  • Filippetti, Andrea

Abstract

A central factor which characterizes design-related innovative activities is that a major source of knowledge – that is designers – is very often located outside the firm. This raises a central management issue for the firm and unavoidably generates a tension between designer consultants and the firm which I name the essential tension. The aim of this paper is to shed some light on this complex relationship on the ground of the evidence provided by a multiple case study. The findings confirm that designer consultants can make a substantial contribution in enhancing firms’ innovation capabilities. We show that a better understanding of the types of knowledge that designers need for their activity is key. This affects the way designer consultants are integrated within the organizational structure of the firm, and it also impinges on the strategies put forward by firms to manage this relationship in order to gain a competitive advantage driven by innovation. Implications include the crucial role played by the product manager, the strategies to foster trust and to coordinate designers.

Suggested Citation

  • Filippetti, Andrea, 2010. "Harnessing the 'essential tension' of design: The complex relationship between the firm and designer consultants," MPRA Paper 22002, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:22002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/22002/1/MPRA_paper_22002.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Czarnitzki, Dirk & Thorwarth, Susanne, 2009. "The design paradox: the contribution of in-house and external design activities on product market performance," ZEW Discussion Papers 09-068, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    2. Ashish Arora & Alfonso Gambardella & Enzo Rullani, 1997. "Division of Labour and the Locus of Inventive Activity," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 1(1), pages 123-140, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Beatrice d'Ippolito, 2014. "The importance of design for firms' competitiveness: a review of the literature," Working Papers hal-00936947, HAL.
    2. Beatrice d'Ippolito, 2014. "The importance of design for firms' competitiveness: a review of the literature," Working paper serie RMT - Grenoble Ecole de Management hal-00936947, HAL.
    3. D’Ippolito, Beatrice & Miozzo, Marcela & Consoli, Davide, 2014. "Knowledge systematisation, reconfiguration and the organisation of firms and industry: The case of design," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(8), pages 1334-1352.
    4. Archibugi, Daniele, 2017. "The social imagination needed for an innovation-led recovery," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(3), pages 554-556.
    5. DâIppolito,Beatrice & Miozzo,Marcela & Consoli,Davide, 2012. "Knowledge systematisation and the development of a business function: the case of design," INGENIO (CSIC-UPV) Working Paper Series 201202, INGENIO (CSIC-UPV), revised 30 May 2012.
    6. Daniele Archibugi & Bengt-Åke Lundvall & Edward Steinmueller, 2016. "Science Fiction and Economic Cycles. A Dialogue on Technological Expectations," Management Working Papers 12, Birkbeck Department of Management, revised Nov 2016.
    7. Daniele Archibugi & Bengt-Ã…ke Lundvall & Edward Steinmueller, 2016. "(English) Science Fiction and Economic Cycles. A Dialogue on Technological Expectations (Italiano) Fantascienza e cicli economici. Un dialogo sulle aspettative tecnologiche," IRPPS Working Papers 90:2016, National Research Council, Institute for Research on Population and Social Policies.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Crass, Dirk & Schwiebacher, Franz, 2013. "Do trademarks diminish the substitutability of products in innovative knowledge-intensive services?," ZEW Discussion Papers 13-061, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    2. Balconi, Margherita, 2002. "Tacitness, codification of technological knowledge and the organisation of industry," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 357-379, March.
    3. Bettina Peters & Rebecca Riley & Iulia Siedschlag & Priit Vahter & John McQuinn, 2018. "Internationalisation, innovation and productivity in services: evidence from Germany, Ireland and the United Kingdom," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 154(3), pages 585-615, August.
    4. Gholz, Eugene & James, Andrew D. & Speller, Thomas H., 2018. "The second face of systems integration: An empirical analysis of supply chains to complex product systems," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(8), pages 1478-1494.
    5. Livio Cricelli & Marco Greco & Michele Grimaldi, 2016. "Assessing The Open Innovation Trends By Means Of The Eurostat Community Innovation Survey," International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 20(03), pages 1-30, April.
    6. Eleonora Di Maria & Stefano Micelli, 2007. "District leaders as open networks: emerging business strategies in Italian industrial districts," "Marco Fanno" Working Papers 0038, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno".
    7. Adrián Kovács & Bart Looy & Bruno Cassiman, 2015. "Exploring the scope of open innovation: a bibliometric review of a decade of research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 104(3), pages 951-983, September.
    8. Graña, Fernando M. & del Mar Benavides-Espinosa, Maria & Roig-Dobón, Salvador, 2018. "Determinants of silent and explicit industrial design," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 314-320.
    9. Mario Benassi, 2009. "Investigating modular organizations," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 13(3), pages 163-192, August.
    10. Milan Miric & Hakan Ozalp & Erdem Dogukan Yilmaz, 2023. "Trade‐offs to using standardized tools: Innovation enablers or creativity constraints?," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(4), pages 909-942, April.
    11. Eric von Hippel, 1998. "Economics of Product Development by Users: The Impact of "Sticky" Local Information," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 44(5), pages 629-644, May.
    12. Stefano Brusoni, 2003. "Authority in the Age of Modularity," SPRU Working Paper Series 101, SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School.
    13. Stephen Roper & James H Love & Priit Vahter, 2012. "The Value Of Design Strategies For New Product Development: Some Econometric Evidence," University of Tartu - Faculty of Economics and Business Administration Working Paper Series 85, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Tartu (Estonia).
    14. Arora, Ashish & Gambardella, Alfonso, 1999. "Markets for technology (why do we see them, why don't we see more of them and why we should care)," DEE - Working Papers. Business Economics. WB 6520, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía de la Empresa.
    15. Storz, Cornelia, 2008. "Dynamics in innovation systems: Evidence from Japan's game software industry," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(9), pages 1480-1491, October.
    16. Jovanović, Miroslav N., 2019. "The Supply Chain Economy: How Far does it Spread in Space and Time?," Economia Internazionale / International Economics, Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura di Genova, vol. 72(4), pages 393-452.
    17. Michael Fritsch & Viktor Slavtchev, 2007. "What determines the efficiency of regional innovation systems?," Jena Economics Research Papers 2007-006, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    18. Mario Coccia & Greta Falavigna & Alessandro Manello, 2015. "The impact of hybrid public and market-oriented financing mechanisms on the scientific portfolio and performances of public research labs: a scientometric analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(1), pages 151-168, January.
    19. Stefano Brusoni & Keith Pavitt, 2003. "Problem solving and the co-ordination of innovative activities," SPRU Working Paper Series 93, SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School.
    20. Garzarelli, Giampaolo & Limam, Yasmina Reem & Thomassen, Bjørn, 2007. "Open Source Software and Economic Growth: A Classical Division of Labor Perspective," MPRA Paper 3849, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    industrial design; innovation; product development; case study;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M11 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Production Management
    • O32 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Management of Technological Innovation and R&D

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:22002. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.