O valor do Design : o impacto das capacidades em Design na performance económica das organizações

In the midst of increasing competitive and globalized economies, the capability to innovate and adapt to changes in the environment becomes fundamental for an organization’s to secure its own survival and growth. Today many look into Design as a key ingredient of the complex phenomenon of innovation, it becomes increasingly important to understand the underlying capabilities that enable it to promote flexibility and responsiveness to change inside the organization. Nevertheless, until now neither the role, nor the mechanisms, nor even the impact that Design has on organizations competitiveness is considered to sufficiently studied and understood. Design is still seen as a black box process inside the organization. Based on the definition and operationalization of the related constructs this research is both original and successful in its attempts to analyze and clarify the nature of Design capabilities and its relationship with the firm’s economic performance. It aims at unbundling the Design black box demonstrating the importance of such capabilities as valuable resources at the disposal of the organization. It helps to better understand the importance of strategic alignment and market dynamism for the creation and development of Design capabilities. The underlying theoretical assumptions are the result of exhaustive literature analysis of authors from both Design and Strategic management fields. In order to ensure rigorous empirical validity and reliability the methodological basis and research procedures were revised. The conclusions are supported by the results of a large scale survey (N=455), from individual firms and enabling a cross sector comparison. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis was used to provide further validation and methodological guarantees, and the theoretical model was examined in terms of the quality of its adjustment to the data collected by means of structural equations modeling in order to make the conclusions and results as consistent and solid as possibl