The Research On Design-driven Innovation Mechanisems And Design Pattern Evolutiona

Due to the rise of the knowledge-based economy, the formation of the consumer society, and the increase of the manufacturing cost, more and more enterprises realize that a good design is the key to the success in market competition. At the same time, some leading enterprises have been exploring and taking a kind of new innovation model, the "design-driven innovation". This model creatively integrates social, cultural and technological factors into an innovative product. It focuses on the enhancement of human creativity through product innovation from the viewpoint of the relationship between the product and the human, as well as that between the product and the society.However, Chinese enterprises have encountered a "design-driven innovation black box" for they lack a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between the design and the innovation. They do not understand the systematic interaction among the resource, the capability and the innovation performance in the design-driven innovation. Under this background, through literature reviews and enterprise case studies, this thesis raises three fundamental problems that need to be addressed. They are (1) what are the elements of design resources for an enterprise to implement design-driven innovation? How do they affect the innovation capabilities and, in turn, the innovation performance? (2) How do enterprises improve their design capabilities by means of strategic and structural reformation. (3) How can government and enterprises conduct design-driven innovation strategy.This thesis begins with a thorough review of related work on design-driven innovation, resource-based view, knowledge network and organization study. It presents an exploratory case study on five typical design-driven innovation projects in China. The study concludes with a conceptual model of design-driven innovation which is based on the resource-based view. The model can be summarized as a path of three steps:from the design resources to the design innovation capabilities and,finally, to the innovation performance. This model is further elaborated with a set of hypotheses on these three steps. These hypotheses are then validated through large-scale questionnaires and statistics analysis.This thesis then surveys the dimensions and metrics used in existing work to measure the design capabilities. A concept of "design pattern" is proposed accordingly. We argue that existing design patterns can be categorized into 5 groups along the dimensions of the strategy and the organization. A set of hypotheses about the relationship between the choice of the design patterns and the design capabilities is proposed, which is tested and validated through a case study on the textile and garment industry in Zhejiang, China. The result suggests that the enterprises'design capabilities of different design patterns have significant differences, and the development of the design capabilities is path-dependent along the evolution of the patterns.Finally, this thesis suggests management solutions for Chinese enterprises to deal with challenges in the design-driven innovation.The outline and conclusion of this research is as follows:1. There are three types of resources including internal design resources, external social-cultural resources, and external technological resources for enterprises. These resources are important to improve the effectiveness and the efficiency of innovation. We argue that internal design resources are of the greatest importance since they have the most direct impact on performance. This implies that an enterprise must depend primarily on itself during the implementation of the design-driven innovation, and in the mean time pay enough attention to potential benefits from external social-cultural knowledge and technological knowledge.2. Enterprises'capabilities of design innovation have two folds, one of which is the design of the semantics of the product, the other is the design of the functions of the product. This two capabilities have an important effect on design performance. In fact,the impact of design resource on the innovation performance works through these two capabilities. However, the internal design resources affects the innovation performance through both capabilities, while external social-cultural resources can have an impact on the innovation performance through the semantic design capability only. Likewise, the external technological resources affect the innovation performance only through the functional design capability.3. The design capabilities can be in four different levels including the basic capability, the professional capability, the competitive capability and the innovation capability. An enterprise can promote the evolution of design patterns and improve its design capabilities through active reformation of both its strategy and its structure.4. Because of the gap between the social-cultural network and the technological network, it is often difficult for Chinese enterprises to have good capabilities in both product design and product semantics. Meanwhile, they typically over rely on their existing approaches to design capabilities. To get out of such a dead loop, this thesis suggests that an enterprise be open to both its social-cultural network and its technological network, and learn to reintegrate its internal resources from its organization, its business process and other channels. It also suggests that the government reconstruct the external knowledge network by means of policy support, design training as well as market training.The case studies proposed in this thesis enrich the work on the design-driven innovation. The systematic set of theories and methodologies presented helps Chinese enterprises to improve their design capabilities and innovative performances.