Cheryl Nakata and S. Cem Bahadir
The purpose of this paper is to determine whether and how managing three aspects of design – the strategic role of design, outsourcing of design and organizational resistance to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to determine whether and how managing three aspects of design – the strategic role of design, outsourcing of design and organizational resistance to design – contribute to new product and service sales success.
Design/methodology/approach
The study was conducted through an online survey of US-based innovation managers. Measures were developed from past literature. In total, 324 managers with at least two years of innovation experience in diverse industries completed the survey. The collected data was checked for measurement reliability and then was used to test a model through regression analyses.
Findings
The model was significant, and each of the three aspects of design management was found to influence innovation sales in unique ways. The strategic role enhances sales, organizational resistance impedes sales and outsourcing strengthens then lowers sales. It makes no difference in results if the firms are manufacturers or service providers, indicating the model is robust across industries.
Practical implications
Strategic (design role), operational (design outsourcing) and cultural (design resistance) elements of design management matter to innovation. To better ensure strong new product and service sales, firms should elevate the role of design in innovation, apply a combined approach of externalizing and internalizing the design function and reduce organizational resistance to design.
Originality/value
This paper is one of the first to empirically examine the innovation impacts of design management, specifically determining the effects of design’s strategic importance, limits when outsourced and organization resistance on new product and service sales.
Details
Keywords
Cheryl Nakata and S. Cem Bahadir
The purpose of this study is to determine how design should be managed to develop truly innovative products and services. Three management levers were examined: design leadership…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to determine how design should be managed to develop truly innovative products and services. Three management levers were examined: design leadership, design inclusion and design thinking.
Design/methodology/approach
The study was carried out as a survey of innovation managers in the USA. The survey measures were developed from the design and innovation literature. Over 300 managers participated in the survey, and their responses were analyzed by using multiple regressions and other statistical tools.
Findings
All three aspects of design that were studied – leadership, team inclusion and thinking – were found to significantly and positively impact new product and service innovativeness. Of these factors, the most important contributor to innovativeness was design thinking, with having more than three times the impact of the other two. Also, firms that are large, publicly held and technology-intensive are on average more innovative.
Practical implications
To increase the innovativeness – or novelty, interest in and influential – of new products and services, managers should appoint designers as leaders on innovation project, include designers in development teams and above all integrate the design thinking process in organizations.
Originality/value
This study determines that design leadership, inclusion and thinking increases the innovativeness of new products and services.
Details
Keywords
Igor O. Golosnoy and Jan K. Sykulski
The purpose of this paper is to access performance of existing computational techniques to model strongly non‐linear coupled thermo‐electric problems.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to access performance of existing computational techniques to model strongly non‐linear coupled thermo‐electric problems.
Design/methodology/approach
A thermistor is studied as an example of a strongly non‐linear diffusion problem. The temperature field and the current flow in the device are mutually coupled via ohmic heating and very rapid variations of electric conductivity with temperature and applied electric field, which makes the problem an ideal test case for the computational techniques. The finite volume fully coupled and fractional steps (splitting) approaches on a fixed computational grid are compared with a fully coupled front‐fixing method. The algorithms' input parameters are verified by comparison with published experiments.
Findings
It was found that fully coupled methods are more effective for non‐linear diffusion problems. The front fixing provides additional improvements in terms of accuracy and computational cost.
Originality/value
This paper for the first time compares in detail advantages and implementation complications of each method being applied to the coupled thermo‐electric problems. Particular attention is paid to conservation properties of the algorithms and accurate solutions in the transition region with rapid changes in material properties.