Task 2.2.2: Developing a Typology of the Roles of Designer and Design Competence in Innovation
The purpose of this paper is to specify and develop a classification scheme of the roles of designers in innovation, in particular to how they may contribute to business and economic growth and success. The purpose, in other words, is to make sense of such new concepts in the new and conflated field of innovation and design as “open innovation” and “co-designing” and of how to become an innovative and creative organization that is highly successful; whether talking about in-house designers, hiring design consultancies to work on product or service design or on organizational processes in commercial or public contexts
Despite a high interest, there has been a paucity of research that would have defined or specified on the basis of case-based evidence, for example, roles that designers and their competence can have as a force for innovation. Such definition is the objective of our research project, Creativity for Growth and Innovation in Europe (Cre8tv.EU), where we define these roles and create a typology for the roles designers and design competence have for innovation and how such design involvement can be harnessed for creating competitive advantage of firms.