The following is an extract from ‘Innovating Through Design’, article by Roberto Verganti published in Harvard Business Review, December 2006.
Professor Verganti teaches Innovation Management and runs the Design Management concentration for MIP Politecnico di Milanos MBA. He is a member of the Advisory Boards of the Design Management Institute of Boston and Innocrowding.com and the founder and president of PROject Science, a consultancy society on strategic innovation. Verganti has published more than 150 works in the sector, has been featured in Harvard Business Review, BusinessWeek and the Wall Street Journal and has been a visiting professor at Harvard and Copenhagen Business School.
Everyone has seen the whimsical cone-shaped kettle with the plastic birdie affixed to its spout, designed by the architect Michael Graves. Since its introduction in 1985 by Alessi, the northern-Italian home-furnishings manufacturer, approximately 1.5 million units of what is, as kettles go, an expensive item have been sold.
The success of model 9093 attracted the attention of Target, a retailer known for offering sophisticated designs at popular prices, which in 1999 invited Graves to design a new line of products, including a knockoff of the bird kettle. Alessi continues to sell large numbers of model 9093for five times the price of Targets version. Since both original and knockoff were designed by the same person, the critical variable would appear to be Alessi itself. The products originality and prestige are the outcome of a process that is based in Milan but embraces participants and notions far beyond it. Indeed, the process transcends the discipline of design. What Alessi and its local brethren have devised is nothing less than an engine of innovation. Whats more, the maestros of this process are executives, not artists or artisans. Thus any kind of consumer-goods company, located anywhere could adopt the process.
Alessi, Flos, Artemide and Kartell, and many other firms make up the Lombardy design discourse, a loose collection of home-furnishings companies that create highly marketable products with distinctive design profiles. These companies do not follow either of the design industrys norms: tech push, whereby an improvement in performance and functionality dictates a modification in design, or market pull, whereby the design accommodates consumers demand for new features. Nor do they resort to the open-innovation techniques for which IBM, Procter & Gamble, and Eli Lilly, have become known. That is, they dont rely on an anonymous horde of code writers to perfect an existing product; they dont in-license the patented discoveries of unaffiliated businesses or inventors; and they dont out-license their own discoveries to generate revenues with minimal effort.
The Lombardy firms R&D; operation, for the most part comprises a free-floating community of architects, suppliers, photographers, critics, publishers, and craftsmen, as well as artists and designers. Usually the products that result from this process point towards some new way of living and represent a dramatic break from their predecessors. In this they differ from products that result when a company outsources the R&D; phase to a design studio which explores consumer needs by asking consumers what they want and by observing their behaviour. In addition, products that are radically innovative alla Milano tend to have longer commercial lives; they create in consumers bolder expectations for the brand and high receptivity to their successors; and they tend to enjoy high margins, because they are so dissimilar to the offerings of competitors.
One neednt be artistic to contribute to this design process. Alberto Alessi is a lawyer by training, as is Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, the chairman of the holding company of Cassina and Poltrona Frau. Ernesto Gismondi, the chairman of Artemide, is an engineer. Nor does one need to be Italian. In addition to Arad and Graves, the Lombardy designers include Frenchman Philippe Starck; German Richard Sapper; Austrian Ettore Sottsass and many others.
MIPs Design and Luxury Management concentration moulds participants into managers with a specific sensibility and capability to manage design-driven innovation, how to define strategies where design is a source of competitive advantage, understand technological and socio?cultural trends, define communications, brand and technology strategies that sustain design-driven innovation, and how to create organizational environments that foster creativity and learning.
MIPs International MBA equips participants with strong competencies and special mix of technical and management skills required to develop and lead world-class companies in a range of sectors. Students receive personal development, professional career counselling and assistance with recruitment. The school focuses on 4 fundamental elements: analytical approach to problem solving, innovation and technology, soft skills, collaboration with wide company network. Real-world field experience is another integral part of the program, for example: Organizational Check Up, a real consulting project, and 3-month, in-company Project Work.
Note: This is a sponsored article and has NOT been written by the PaGaLGuY Editorial Team. It is intended from an informational perspective only and it is upto the readers to research and verify the claims and judgments in the article before reaching a conclusion.