Conference Agenda

This article outlines the evolution of Design in Strategy and Strategy in Design and discusses the differences and similarities. The examination of the evolutions revealed three different perspectives on integrating Strategy and Design in both fields. The article provides a nuanced understanding of Strategic Design by purposefully establishing the vocabulary of each perspective. The first perspective is a planning practice containing strategic tools and design methods to create conceptual plans. The second perspective is a learning practice through collective reflection from intent and action. The last perspective is the enablement of a comprehensive design practice in which tangible design and strategy emerge from the messiness of creative and collaborative design practice. These Strategic Design practices require different organization and design capabilities and produce distinctive outcomes. The integration of Design and Strategy is becoming increasingly imperative as there is the need to address the more complex, interrelated socio-technological and economic-environmental challenges.

This paper focuses on service prototyping in a global B2B technology company experimenting with the B2C market. We first establish the research framework with existing literature on service prototyping and then report a case in which service prototypes and prototyping approaches were used to contribute to different phases of a new service development project: a) discover and define, b) develop and deliver and c) implementation and rollout. We then reflect on the role of prototyping as a translational practice in facilitating cross-organizational collaboration and aligning and enhancing the commitment of various stakeholders. The first author, with a dual role of designer and researcher, was engaged in planning, documenting, re-constructing and examining the case project's process, activities, actors, outputs and outcomes. The results illustrate that prototypes and prototyping are translational practices in which knowledge from research and design practice becomes entangled.

This study attempts to (1) conceptualize the cultural capital of individuals who accept Design Thinking (DT) and (2) develop a scale from the level of individual values, beliefs, and mindset. Previous studies on design thinking have mainly analyzed designers and trained design thinkers. However, this capacity resource is inherently considered to lie with all employees, including non-designers. Being able to embrace DT can be paraphrased as holding beliefs, values, and attitudes related to design. As DT does not necessarily require formal education, the development of such a scale could also be useful for finding natural design thinkers in organizations. We recruited 400 respondents who had registered on a Japanese crowdsourcing platform and asked them to complete an online survey.

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) play a crucial role in local economic growth, representing 99.5% of all businesses in Australia. However, product development poses a challenge for SMEs due to their limited resources and barriers to readily invest in Research and Development (R&D). To overcome these constraints SMEs often outsource R&D activities to higher education institutions, emerging as vital partners. While university-industry collaboration offers mutual benefits to industry and academia, Australia is underperforming compared to other OECD countries. This research delves into the dynamics of Australian SMEs' micro-level interactions with universities, uncovering the barriers and enablers in their collaborative New Product Development (NPD) efforts. The findings offer valuable insights for universities seeking to enhance their partnerships with local SMEs, ultimately contributing to innovation-driven growth for the Australian economy.

Well-designed workspaces have the potential to enhance a designer’s creativity if the designer knows how to make effective use of that space. ‘Metacognition’ refers to the monitoring and control of one’s thought process and could provide a theoretical basis for understanding designer-environment interactions. However, there is a lack of theory at the intersection of metacognition and workspaces. Here, we adapt Lebuda and Benedek’s Systematic Framework of Creative Metacognition to the topic of designers and creative spaces. Using this framework and empirical research about creative metacognition, we (i) identify two roles for metacognitive processing in the context of creative spaces, (ii) propose methods for measuring the metacognitive processing, and (iii) identify training and spatial interventions that have the potential to enhance metacognition and creative performance. This provides a launchpad for empirical research about the relationship between designers and their workplaces.

Today’s challenges in areas such as climate change, health technology, and digitization require adapted or even new products. Thus, product design gains higher importance since it defines human-centered solutions, leading to lower or higher acceptance of new design solutions. While the benefits of design seem to be compelling, previous research has shown that industry still faces challenges in prioritizing design along complex interdisciplinary development processes. In this paper, we aim to gain a deeper understanding of these challenges. Based on qualitative exploratory interviews with thirteen designers from the industry, three main and interrelated challenges were identified: A lack of knowledge about the concept of design, a lack of knowledge about the value of design, and the challenge of giving design a high priority. We also identified underlying causes and possible approaches. Based on this, we suggest possible future research directions to strengthen the role of design and designers in organizations.