Designing Innovation of Meanings - A Competitive Advantage

Design is a resource that could be better utilized by companies in order to create growth and sustainable innovation in the future. Numerous scholars have therefore stressed the importance of forward-looking executives and designers in today’s organizations that realize the importance of design as a differentiator. This research intends to illustrate how innovation of meanings is a future competitive advantage and to show how companies can benefit from design as an innovation tool. New product meanings can be pushed upon the market through proposals, something that is being compared to the traditional user-centred methods where user needs are being scrutinized. The theoretical framework identifies four factors that can be set in relation to any company in order to investigate its stance towards innovation of new meanings. The research is limited to focus on two case companies and complemented by information from Jönköping School of Engineering, being their mutual external source of novel design ideas. The case studies show how the four factors all rely on a vision that supports design and affects the firms’ ability to capitalize on novel ideas found among external sources. This study concludes that a co-occurring search of novel design interpretations and market pull innovations is of highest importance. It further discusses how to interact with external sources in a way that does not block their potential to explore new product meanings.