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.

This process reflects the profound and precise dynamics of research rather than the speed of brainstorming. It implies sharing knowledge through exploratory experiments rather than extemporaneous creativity. It resembles the process of science and engineering (although it targets meanings rather than technologies) more than that of a creative agenc

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.”

Technologies are therefore closely related to meanings, and indeed technological breakthroughs often trigger radical innovations in meanings

Firms that develop design-driven innovations step back from users and take a broader perspective. They explore how the context in which people live is evolving, both in sociocultural terms (how the reason people buy things is changing) and in technical terms (how technologies, products, and services are shaping that context).

Innovation has therefore focused on two strategies: quantum leaps in product performance enabled by breakthrough technologies, and improved product solutions enabled by better analysis of users’ needs. The former is the domain of radical innovation pushed by technology, and the latter of incremental innovation pulled by the market (see figure 1-1).

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

Radical innovations of meanings, being unexpected, sometimes initially confuse people. To prepare the ground for groundbreaking proposals, firms leverage the seductive power of interpreters. By discussing and internalizing a firm’s novel vision, these interpreters inevitably change the life context (through the technologies they develop, the produc

Apple is building a scenario of life in which people rent or buy movies at the iTunes stores, download songs from this online store and listen to them through the iPod, and back up data and upload applications wirelessly. In this scenario there is no room for CDs and DVDs. Apple has therefore released its newest notebook, the MacBook Air, without a

Innovating design requires managers to ask, What is the deepest reason people buy our product? Why is it meaningful to them? And most of all, How can we gratify people and make them more content by providing products that suggest new meanings? I know you can immediately provide a long list of answers to these questions. However, I would not be surp