Design Value: The Role of Design in Innovation was an eighteen-month AHRC funded research project carried out in collaboration with Innovate UK and the Knowledge Transfer Network Special Interest Group on Design. The principal aim of this research was to identify the roles design can play in innovation, the contributions of those roles to innovation, and the conditions under which these contributions actually happen.
In summary, the findings indicate the great majority of the companies, and especially those that use design as process and as strategy, realise significant benefits from engaging in design. There are several indications that these companies outperform those that do not engage in design, or that limit their engagement in design to styling. But even among this latter group, a large share report benefits of engaging in design, benefits that stretch beyond those associated with a narrow use of design as styling.
Rachel Cooper
Dr Ricardo J. Hernandez
Emma Murphy