Designer-Originated Technology Innovations in Innovative Products:

This paper introduced hypotheses on the benefit of cross-functional involvement of professional designers in new product development activities, especially into technology development. To examine the return for both invention and new product development, we surveyed cases of innovative products and 90 international design award-winning products. Our investigation revealed that involvement of designers promotes (i) new technological idea creation, (ii) improvement of productivity of the technology development team by stimulating a common understanding of the goal, and (iii) bridging technology between firms or functional teams. These technological achievements contribute to realization of new products based on innovative concepts. We also found that these technological contributions are not rare phenomena. We cannot affirm that the contributions are designer-specific, but we are able to introduce several hypotheses about the innovation creation process in cross-functional teams