Print Email Facebook Twitter Improving innovation strategic decision-making through the collaboration with design consultancies Title Improving innovation strategic decision-making through the collaboration with design consultancies Author Calabretta, G. Gemser, G. Wijnberg, N. Hekkert, P.P.M. Faculty Industrial Design Engineering Department Product Innovation Management Date 2012-12-31 Abstract Innovation and design literature have given limited consideration to the strategic role of design consultancies in the innovation processes of their clients. A plausible explanation is the difficulty to assess the quality of design consultancies’ output, given the intangibility of the output itself and the difficulty of connecting a knowledge-intensive output to clients’ performance indicators. In this paper we examine design consultancies’ impact on their clients’ strategic decision-making as a way of capturing design consultancies’ strategic role in their clients’ innovation efforts. Design consultancies can influence strategic decisions by enhancing three strategic decision-making mechanisms identified by the literature – rationality, intuition, and political behaviour. By examining the Dutch design consultancy industry, we find initial evidence of design consultancies’ capability of affecting clients’ strategic decision-making. Early involvement in problem definition and long term relationships with clients strengthen design consultancies’ influence. Subject strategic decision-makingdesign consultanciescollaborations To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:e93d20c5-cab6-49f2-a6db-06cde75e8792 Publisher DMI ISBN 978-0-615-66453-8 Source Leading innovation through design: Proceedings of the 2012 DMI international research conference, Boston (USA), 8-9 Aug. 2012 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type conference paper Rights (c) 2012 The Authors Files PDF Calbretta.pdf 215.2 KB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:e93d20c5-cab6-49f2-a6db-06cde75e8792/datastream/OBJ/view