Design Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean

These companies instead search for new possibilities that are consistent with the evolution of sociocultural phenomena but that are not there until a company transforms them into products and proposes them to people. They look for the seeds that they can cultivate into blossoms.

To understand possible new meanings, the company steps back and looks at the big picture to see what people could love in a yet-to-exist scenario and how they might receive new proposals.

When Picasso painted, he never thought about a target audience. He didn’t have a target segment of users in mind. But eventually he was not only a great artist. Those who discovered him made also a great business. There is an enormous (and unexploited) business potential also in this type of innovation.”

A company looking for radical innovation of meaning does not get too close to users, because the meaning users give to things is bounded by the existing sociocultural regime. Instead, when investing in radical innovation of meaning, companies such as Artemide and Alessi take a step back and investigate the evolution of society, economy, culture, ar

These innovations do not question dominant meanings but simply refresh and further reinforce them. This is the domain of style.

“Working within the meta-project transcends the creation of an object purely to satisfy a function and necessity. Each object represents… a proposal.”

“In our firm developing a product is like conducting an orchestra: the customers are the audience.”10

“We have a lot of customers, and we have a lot of research into our installed base. But in the end, for something this complicated, it’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

the company looks at people, not users.