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Technology Innovation Management Review June 2016 (Volume 6, Issue 6)
49
www.timreview.ca
Outcomes from Applying Design-Led Innovation
in an Australian Manufacturing Firm
Peter Townson, Judy Matthews, and Cara Wrigley
Introduction
Companies with prior success with technological innov-
ation are often not aware of new methods of gaining in-
formation about the demands for their products and
services using customer-focused methods. Design
mindsets, philosophies, and principles have been im-
plemented through design thinking (Brown, 2008,
2009), design-driven innovation (Verganti, 2009), and
more recently design-led innovation (Bucolo et al.,
2012). These approaches represent a powerful way to
generate, shape, and deliver new value propositions
and innovation in a range of companies.
Much of the literature regarding applications of design
thinking, design driven innovation, and design-led in-
novation has focused on large firms (Brown & Martin,
2015; Kolko, 2015; Smith, 2015; Yoo & Kim, 2015) with
an absence of research regarding small and medium-
sized enterprises. In addition, although the benefits of
design management programs – where design consult-
ants have used processes and methods to assist firms to
capture deep customer insights, restructure the busi-
ness, and increase the firm’s competitiveness – have
previously been seen (Hollinger, 2012), there is scant re-
search that investigates the use of designers undertak-
ing action research projects as innovation catalysts em-
bedded in small and medium-sized enterprises in the
manufacturing sector.
The study described in this article explored possibilities
of design-led innovation in small and medium-sized en-
terprises where a designer using action research acted
as an innovation catalyst. The aim was to increase
knowledge of the influence and benefits of design-led
innovation in assisting companies to generate new
ways of working and new possibilities for the company.
The research question driving the study was: how can a
small or medium-sized manufacturer use design-led in-
novation to overcome barriers and recognize opportun-
ities within a changing market context? The primary
goal was to identify key imperatives to assist the com-
pany overcome barriers in implementing design-led in-
novation into their company culture.
This research builds new knowledge in understanding
the practical application of various methods within the
design-led innovation framework, and their impact and
effect on the company. Action research expressly en-
courages a collaborative approach with a company that
Design-led innovation has recently emerged as an approach that assists companies to de-
velop new capabilities to respond to changing markets. Previous research has shown that
the application of design-led innovation to manufacturing businesses contributed to innov-
ation across their business model, often repositioning the business and its offerings in the
market. This article presents findings from a study where the researcher was embedded in
an Australian firm, working four days per week for 11 months and using action research to
apply design-led innovation. Deep insights from stakeholders were translated with the
company staff into new value propositions for the company. This research demonstrates
the largely untapped potential of an experienced designer as an innovation catalyst to help
firms develop customer-inspired innovation as they use design-led innovation to overcome
barriers and recognize opportunities within a changing market context. This study contrib-
utes new knowledge regarding benefits of design-led innovation in dynamic environments.
Everyone designs who changes existing
situations in preferred futures.
Herbert A. Simon (1916–2001)
In The Sciences of the Artificial
“”
Technology Innovation Management Review June 2016 (Volume 6, Issue 6)
50
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Applying Design-Led Innovation in an Australian Manufacturing Firm
Peter Townson, Judy Matthews, and Cara Wrigley
is experiencing change, and is particularly important to
the research aim of using design-led innovation as a
mechanism to bring about organizational change. We
begin by considering extant research regarding links
between design and innovation before outlining meth-
odology, describing findings, and concluding with prac-
tical implications.
Design and Innovation
Design-led innovation is a process that shifts the role of
a designer to work across an organization to radically
change a company’s view of the value proposition
offered to customers (Kyffin & Gardien, 2009), to co-
design (Chesbrough & Schwartz, 2007), and to generate
a unique and sustainable competitive advantage (Bu-
colo & Matthews, 2011b). With the relative newness of
design-led innovation, case study research into the
complexities faced by companies with the implementa-
tion and integration of this process is quite sparse. To
add a new perspective, this research presents a case
study of one Australian manufacturing company oper-
ating in the mining equipment, technology, and ser-
vices (METS) sector, and how design-led innovation fits
within their family-owned and engineering-driven or-
ganizational and cultural framework.
Design-led innovation is broadly defined as a method
that allows a company to consider and evaluate radic-
ally new propositions from multiple perspectives, typic-
ally spanning user needs, business requirements, and
technology demands (Bucolo et al., 2012). Key to this
process is that design is core to a company’s vision,
strategy, culture, leadership, and development pro-
cesses. The design-led innovation framework outlined
below (Figure 1), provides a conceptual structure to as-
sist the development of innovation through collabora-
tion across the entire organization; it integrates the
operational functions with the strategic vision by com-
bining internal and external sources.
The importance and potential of thinking and working
as a designer, popularly referred to as “design think-
ing”, is increasingly being recognized as a valuable pro-
cess for generating new ways of working and new
solutions. Design thinking “uses the designer’s sensibil-
ity and methods to match people’s needs with what is
technically feasible and what business strategy can con-
vert into customer value and market opportunities”
(Brown, 2008). With this widely accepted notion (Hollo-
way, 2009; Liedtka & Ogilvie 2010; Norman & Verganti,
2012; Verganti, 2010; Ward et al., 2009), design thinking
holds a customer-centric view by utilizing human-
Figure 1. The design-led innovation framework (Adapted from Bucolo et al., 2012)
Technology Innovation Management Review June 2016 (Volume 6, Issue 6)
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Applying Design-Led Innovation in an Australian Manufacturing Firm
Peter Townson, Judy Matthews, and Cara Wrigley
centred design, experimentation, and concept proto-
typing as ways for a design to have an impact across the
innovation process (Holloway, 2009; Norman & Ver-
ganti, 2012; Ogilvie, 2010; Verganti, 2010; Ward et al.,
2009). Design thinking as a style of thought is built
upon “abductive reasoning” (C. S. Peirce cited in Cross,
1982; Martin, 2004, 2009, 2010). Abductive reasoning is
“reasoning in which explanatory hypotheses are
formed and evaluated” (Thagard & Shelley, 1997); it is
“characteristically 'constructive' thinking… something
peculiar to design” (Cross, 1982).
Design thinking uses a method of prototyping to reduce
the risk in a business model concept by testing it with
the marketplace; it allows for the creative development
of an idea. By taking a holistic systems perspective,
design thinking creates strong value propositions that
interweave through business model development so
the value received is greater than the sum of the parts.
Design as an innovation mechanism is an iterative pro-
cess that can assist in both uncovering problems with
stakeholders, analyzing some possibilities, and then
synthesizing multiple elements to form new solutions.
During this process, the practitioner moves between
the concrete and abstract worlds of understanding
(Beckman & Barry, 2009) to build new value proposi-
tions.
Design-led innovation builds on this theory by intern-
ally aligning the solution with the company's strategy,
resources, and brand. Design and innovation as organ-
izational processes work with the staff who deliver the
resultant innovation, not in isolation from organization-
al systems. Design-led innovation can also align corpor-
ate ideologies to fit and potentially leverage the
company's internal capabilities, resources, and brand
(business model) in order to generate an innovative
solution that creates a competitive advantage.
Design thinking is a foundational activity within design-
led innovation, by leveraging a creative systems per-
spective that integrates the design of the business mod-
els. Design-led innovation is a philosophy that
“examines every core facet of the business, to realign
business strategy with customer needs and possible
market futures” (Pozzey et al., 2012). Design-led innova-
tion is derived through a creative interrelationship
between these fundamental business elements to gen-
erate true value for the customer and to capture profits
for growth, as shown in Figure 2.
In Australia, the mining equipment, technology and ser-
vices (METS) sector is comprised of predominately
engineering-based organizations (Tedesco & Curtotti,
2005) that “provide technology and services to make
the nation’s mining industry competitive” (CSIRO,
2003). Exporting over AUD $6 Billion annually (Aust-
mine, 2012), the METS sector has become more profit-
able than the mining industry within Australia (CSIRO,
2003). With the relative newness of design-led innova-
tion, case study research into the complexities faced by
companies with the implementation and integration of
this process is quite sparse. This research presents a
case study of one Australian manufacturing company
operating in the METS sector, and explores design-led
innovation within their family-owned and engineering-
driven organizational and cultural framework. To main-
tain anonymity, here we refer to the company as
METSCo.
The current Managing Director of METSCo founded
the company 24 years ago by manufacturing a disrupt-
ive innovation for the mining industry. This medium-
sized company of 170 staff with headquarters in Aus-
tralia and international sales offices develops products
and technology services in a business-to-business con-
text. At the time of the study, the CEO and the Top Man-
agement Team were seeking the next disruptive idea to
take the business to new horizons. The company had
sought assistance through a funded government pro-
Figure 2. Design-led innovation (DLI) as derived in the
intersection of fundamental business elements
Technology Innovation Management Review June 2016 (Volume 6, Issue 6)
52
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Applying Design-Led Innovation in an Australian Manufacturing Firm
Peter Townson, Judy Matthews, and Cara Wrigley
gram where a graduate research student could work
with the company in a 12-month research program to
innovate for growth in a dynamic environment and to
generate new insights about the firm and strategic and
operational directions.
Methodology
Action research was selected as the method of choice to
engage staff within the case organization, and it has
been previously used to explore the potential of design
(Swann, 2002). Action research is a cyclical process of
planning, acting, observing, reflecting, and critically
analyzing (Kemmis, 2009), where these cycles inform
larger action research cycles (Davis, 2004). The method-
ology is well-suited to the journey of design-led innova-
tion because both approaches require continuous and
balanced engagement with the company in all stages of
the cycle (Burns & Brown, 2002). The process assists
staff to improve their capacities to solve problems, to
develop skills (including professional skills), to increase
their chances of self-determination, and to have more
influence on the functioning and decision-making pro-
cesses of the organization.
Adopting an action research methodology, the re-
searcher was embedded within the company, working
four days a week over an 11-month period. This longit-
udinal research specifically investigated the barriers to
design-led innovation and opportunities that de-
veloped throughout this research. The goal was to un-
derstand how the organization and culture of the METS
company evolved and how it progressed towards
design-led change.
Data were collected using semi-structured qualitative
interviews at two distinct points of time during the re-
search project, initially with 15 employees after three
months working with the company and with 20 employ-
ees after nine months. A focus group and a reflective
journal provided further relevant information. Data
captured from these methods were analyzed thematic-
ally for patterns that informed the barriers, opportunit-
ies, and imperatives that resulted from a design-led
innovation engagement.
The researcher worked through an iterative process of
diagnosing the problem, planning the course of action,
taking action with the participants, and evaluating the
consequences of the action and specifying learnings,
which in turn fed into the next evolution of the action
research cycle in this longitudinal study. The researcher
worked with the company staff in small groups to
demonstrate an approach that could be piloted and
then dispersed productively among all employees of
the firm. Activities and interventions by the catalyst in-
cluded capturing deep customer and stakeholder in-
sights, applying these insights in operational and
strategic dimensions of the business, and disseminat-
ing insights within company. Thematic analysis (Miles
& Huberman 1994) was conducted on the combined
data sets in order to identify the nature of responses
and change processes in the firm and to compare
changes over time.
Findings
Prior to the research project at METSCo, the Managing
Director had already received sponsored research into
design-led innovation as a result of a desire “to find
mechanisms to embed more of that (design-led innova-
tion) thinking more deeply into the whole engineering
team so that the place wasn’t just dependent on (a few
key people).”
The Managing Director presented his own personal
journey in understanding the theory of design-led in-
novation, describing to the wider company his own
continual journey of uncomfortable change, moments
of clarity, followed by self-doubt. Participants saw the
buy-in from the top as crucial: “The most successful
change in this organization is directly sponsored by the
Managing Director. So if he decrees something, then we
all get into line and make things happen; if we don't,
there is no other mechanism to make that happen.”
Additionally, “The tone of the Managing Director sets the
tone of the management team, who sets the tone of the
business.”
The vision and foresight of the Managing Director to
implement the design-led innovation project enabled
not only the senior executives but also all employees to
take a customer-centric view of their job and their com-
pany. One employee notes that, “It was his (the Man-
aging Director’s) realization about the first-class product
being beaten by a second-class business model – that
realization alone, is worth everything.” As the company
leader, the Managing Director is the culture leader and,
by disseminating his own insights, like the one quoted
above, encouraged and empowered the engineering-fo-
cused culture to look at innovation beyond technology.
As a result of the design-led innovation project, new op-
portunities were available for METSCo to exploit, to en-
hance their strategic development with a newfound
perspective of innovation. “A business model is an op-
Technology Innovation Management Review June 2016 (Volume 6, Issue 6)
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Applying Design-Led Innovation in an Australian Manufacturing Firm
Peter Townson, Judy Matthews, and Cara Wrigley
portunity; a product is only a fraction of what we now
know we can get, and it is almost an embarrassment.”
The perspective of the Managing Director “has matured
from the design-led innovation process… for sure it’s
been part of the catalyst of maturing a vision, which has
certainly changed my attitude toward (moving into new
areas of innovation).”
In gauging the impact that the design-led innovation
project had on his management team, the Managing Dir-
ector reflects that design-led innovation, “Must be there
to a greater or lesser degree in all the decision makers in
(our company). They must have absorbed something, be-
cause we couldn’t be going down the directions with the
authority that we’re going down these directions.”
Within this case study, the managers of METSCo began
engaging with design tools and design thinking as a way
to quickly prototype businesses models in a rapidly de-
clining economic environment. Specifically, it was the
hands-on practical experience of the managers with
design-led innovation that helped employees overcome
barriers in design language and speculation on its theor-
etical application.
For METSCo to be able to deliver innovative solutions to
create customer value, it was crucial to gain agreement
and commitment to an organizational and cultural per-
spective, which allows and supports a strategic shift
such as this. As one participant notes, "The first step is
knowing the customers, but then if you've got to change
internally, how do you do that?” This organizational
change perspective is commonly raised in academic lit-
erature with regards to business model innovation (Ch-
hatpar, 2007; Zott & Amit, 2010), strategy (Pascale &
Sternin, 2005; Porter, 1996), and design-led innovation
implementation (Matthews et al., 2012; Pozzey et al.,
2012), highlighting its necessity to achieve and sustain
breakthrough innovations.
Although the pressure of the declining mining cycle was
forcing METSCo to change and look at its business dif-
ferently, it was the awakening of senior executives to cus-
tomer pressures that enabled the value of design-led
innovation to be understood and experienced: “We real-
ized that it’s okay to prototype. And we started to proto-
type things to customers finally… that wasn’t so bad.
That didn’t hurt us by putting something to market that
wasn’t totally 100%.”
From an organizational change perspective, the imperat-
ive of having active engagement of employees at all
levels with design-led innovation tools and theories, and
allowing their experiences become the driver for con-
tinuous change in becoming design-led, is clearly
demonstrated. From a company that was justifiably fo-
cused internally on technology innovation, METSCo
now is beginning to see how design-led innovation has
taken a change perspective to guide a engineering cul-
ture toward the customers “job to be done”, allowing
the employees to gain new understanding from first-
hand experiences to drive change internally.
By developing and managing design thinking capabilit-
ies with customer-facing staff, the design-led innova-
tion catalyst was able to gain significant customer
insights second-hand, while encouraging and em-
powering these employees to begin to analyze the mar-
ket in new ways. Within design-led innovation, the role
of the catalyst is one that utilizes design thinking to
“translate and facilitate design observation, insight,
meaning, and strategy into all facets of the company”
(Wrigley & Bucolo, 2012).
Due to the complex and remote nature of the mining in-
dustry, the researcher as catalyst (central within the
framework) and a design champion in the company re-
lied on the assumptions created and tested by the cus-
tomer-facing employees and the primary source of
customer insights, from where new business concepts
are generated. Schön’s (1983) seminal work describes a
theory of knowledge as a thought process through hu-
man perception, or a “reflective conversation with the
situation”, where problems are framed in order to take
action to gain clarity around a situation (Bucolo & Mat-
thews, 2011a). “Competent practitioners usually know
more than they can say” (Schön, 1983). Observation-
ally, this work was seen as valuable to rigorously under-
stand METSCo assumptions around customer needs, as
highlighted in the literature as a key feature in business
model innovation (Casadesus-Masanell & Ricart, 2010;
Chhatpar, 2007; McGrath, 2010; Teece, 2010). However,
the ability to test, validate, or disprove these assump-
tions was limited by the personal capabilities of cus-
tomer-facing employees not trained in divergent
learning, let alone design thinking.
The focus group captured the employee realization of
the potential that channelling customer information
and insights into their company could have on their
job, their interaction with their colleagues, and ulti-
mately their customers. Enabling customer-facing em-
ployees to communicate their reflective knowledge
provided direct input on customer situations to pro-
gress and effectively build multi-perspective observa-
tions.
Technology Innovation Management Review June 2016 (Volume 6, Issue 6)
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Applying Design-Led Innovation in an Australian Manufacturing Firm
Peter Townson, Judy Matthews, and Cara Wrigley
Prototyping as a mechanism for customer-facing em-
ployees to bring customer insights back to the catalyst
was crucial for the project to continue moving forward.
The purpose of the prototype was to engage customer-
facing employees of METSCo to work through design
methods while at mine sites and to generate customer
insights and reflect on them with the catalyst.
The interaction and communication with mining cus-
tomers was a significant factor in changing perspect-
ives. METSCo had traditionally placed a priority in
establishing and maturing organizational processes to
support their primary business in meeting market de-
mand. Engaging customer-facing employees to proto-
type holistic forms of knowledge management
highlights two aspects within the data: i) METSCo
showed commitment in capturing and translating cus-
tomer insights and ii) METSCo developed its under-
standing of the importance that customer-facing
employees play within such a dispersed and isolated in-
dustry. By developing employee and management cap-
abilities in “design thinking”, METSCo began to
holistically address its customer insight processes with
an employee knowledge base that was empowered and
capable to deliver new knowledge to the company.
Discussion and Contributions
Our findings show that a small or medium-sized enter-
prise that embraced a design-led innovation respon-
ded to the catalyst using design-led innovation
processes and practices to explore and learn about
their customers and to capture these insights and re-
configure their capabilities to deliver new more stra-
tegic directions and increased competitiveness. These
findings contribute to a deeper and broader under-
standing of the implementation of design methods and
processes as contributions to strategic renewal of small
and medium-sized enterprises. The research identifies
three specific design principles or “imperatives” de-
rived from the data to guide a design team in
implementing design-led innovation within a METS
company:
1. Design-led change within an engineering-focussed
organization should encourage the company leader-
ship to engage with, reflect upon, and disseminate
their personal journey with design-led innovation.
2. Company management and employees should ex-
perience design-led change first-hand to positively
influence company engagement and commitment
and project traction in the organizational culture.
3. Internal design-thinking capability should allow
METS companies to sustainably generate insights
through their limited but valuable customer engage-
ment.
The significance of these findings is shown in the com-
bined implementation of the design imperatives lead-
ing towards design-led change at all business levels of
an organizational structure. These imperatives are illus-
trated in Figure 3.
This research highlighted three levels of organizational
change at the leadership, management, and employee
levels that occurred as a result of the 11-month embed-
ded design-led innovation engagement with the re-
searcher acting as a catalyst for change within this
Australian METS company. Changes observed
throughout the organization include the company vis-
ion, leadership, innovation, problem solving, customer
centricity – all of these aspects demonstrated a shift
from an engineering culture to a new more inclusive,
customer-centric way of thinking and operating. The
design-led change model brings together three ele-
ments: i) the level in the organization in which design-
led change was being applied, ii) each design imperat-
ive that emerged from each paradigm of business, and
iii) the change that emerged as a result, as shown in
Figure 4.
Figure 3. Three design imperatives (principles) for a design-led innovation engagement within the mining equip-
ment, technology, and services industry
Technology Innovation Management Review June 2016 (Volume 6, Issue 6)
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Applying Design-Led Innovation in an Australian Manufacturing Firm
Peter Townson, Judy Matthews, and Cara Wrigley
For METSCo, a deeper understanding of their custom-
ers was a large part of the value offering of the catalyst.
The researcher was perceived to be creating value in re-
lation to the firm, the industry, and academia. For ex-
ample, the company linked the introduction of a
design-led approach to developing a new customer-fo-
cused business model and to the shift of the organiza-
tional culture from an engineering culture to a more
customer-focused innovation culture. The researcher’s
role was respectively described by employees as a
change catalyst, a knowledge disseminator, and an or-
ganizational culture reformist.
Conclusions
This research contributes new knowledge regarding the
possibilities that design-led innovation brings to organ-
izations seeking to continuously innovate in dynamic
markets. It also highlights the important role of design-
ers as innovation catalysts in building strong links to ex-
isting and potential customers. Working with the
company and engaging and educating organizational
members with design tools and approaches through
direct experience has taken the company some dis-
tance on the journey with design-led innovation. The
practical application of various methods of the design-
led innovation framework had a positive impact on the
firm's interactions with customers and generated new
business opportunities with these customers. Action re-
search's unique and collaborative approach to working
with the participating company also contributes to the
research aim of using design-led innovation as a mech-
anism to bring about organizational change.
The research identifies three specific design principles
or “imperatives” that guide a design team in imple-
menting design-led innovation within a company. This
study explores the processes of introduction, imple-
mentation, and integration of design-led innovation
within a manufacturing company driven by engineer-
ing innovation in a sector dominated by product and
process improvements.
Companies engaged in a design-led program have to
develop strategies for capturing the value from new
knowledge generated through customer insights. Prac-
tical implications for the firm as a whole include the be-
nefits of bringing new ways of thinking and working
into technologically focused company with a tightly
defined engineering culture.
Figure 4. The design-led change model
Technology Innovation Management Review June 2016 (Volume 6, Issue 6)
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About the Authors
Peter Townson is a Design Facilitator for the PwC
Chair in Digital Economy at the Queensland Uni-
versity of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia,
where he recently completed his Master's degree in
design-led innovation. Peter lives the world of design
in the nexus between academia and industry. From
his background as an industrial designer and manu-
facturer, his translation of his craft from the physical
world and into the service and digital worlds' builds
off his post-graduate education and application of
design-led innovation. Peter now facilitates innova-
tion sprints that use design-led innovation to envi-
sion and design the future of our digital economy,
while making his findings relevant to the applied aca-
demic audience of today.
Applying Design-Led Innovation in an Australian Manufacturing Firm
Peter Townson, Judy Matthews, and Cara Wrigley
Implications for designers engaged in design-led innova-
tion within exisiting firms seeking to change their under-
standing include the importance of designers with a
deep understanding of innovation acting as innovation
catalysts. As an active and trusted member of the com-
pany, the designer led the capture of insights from mul-
tiple customers, became a translator of information
from customer insights, and also contributed to organiz-
ational change. The designer as innovation catalyst
gathered and generated meaning from the customer in-
sights, developed employee capability with the custom-
er-facing employees (who were the main direct contact
with the customers on mine sites), and shaped new initi-
atives for the business and facilitated the translation of
customer insights into meaningful business opportunit-
ies. This study adds further support to the value of exper-
ienced designers acting as innovation catalysts to
facilitate organizational transformation through design-
led innovation.
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this article was presented at the
2015 ISPIM Innovation Summit in Brisbane, Australia,
December 6–9, 2015. ISPIM (
ispim.org
) – the International
Society for Professional Innovation Management – is a
network of researchers, industrialists, consultants, and
public bodies who share an interest in innovation man-
agement.
Judy Matthews is a Senior Lecturer at the Queens-
land University of Technology (QUT) Business
School in Brisbane, Australia, where she teaches
both MBAs and senior executives on the topics of in-
novation management, facilitates problem framing
and problem solving in complex environments, and
uses design thinking to develop and execute new
possibilities. Her enthusiasm for the importance of
innovation management can be traced to her re-
search into innovation systems in Australia, in public
sector research, and development and in the man-
agement of change. For the last six years, Judy has
been an active researcher and facilitator in the devel-
opment and application of design mindsets and
methods, recognizing that the frameworks, tools,
and mindsets of designers can be used to help man-
agers to problem solve and innovate in their busi-
nesses and develop new business models. Judy holds
a PhD from QUT and has published articles in a wide
range of international journals, including the Journal
of Business Research, the International Journal of
Technology Management, Innovation: Management,
Policy and Practice, and the Design Management
Journal.
Cara Wrigley is Head of Research in the Design & In-
novation Research Centre at the University of Tech-
nology Sydney (UTS), Australia. The Design &
Innovation Research Centre (DI:rc) is a transdiscip-
linary centre located at UTS, focusing on the devel-
opment of innovative, design-oriented research with
the potential to transform companies. Building on
her solid practical industry experience and com-
bined with her scholarly expertise in emotional
design, she is actively researching the value that
design holds in business – specifically through the
creation of strategies to design business models
which lead to emotive customer engagement. Cara
has presented and published widely in the field of
design-led innovation and currently leading several
initiatives to contribute to both industry and aca-
demia on the value of design to business. She holds a
PhD and a Bachelor of the Built Environment from
the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in
Brisbane, Australia, in addition to a Bachelor of
Design Studies from Griffith University in South East
Queensland, Australia.
Technology Innovation Management Review June 2016 (Volume 6, Issue 6)
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Applying Design-Led Innovation in an Australian Manufacturing Firm
Peter Townson, Judy Matthews, and Cara Wrigley
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Citation: Townson, P., Matthews, J., & Wrigley, C. 2016. Outcomes from Applying Design-Led Innovation in an Australian Manufacturing Firm.
Technology Innovation Management Review, 6(6): 49–58. http://timreview.ca/article/997
Keywords: manufacturing, design-led innovation, innovation catalyst, manufacturing, customer insights
Applying Design-Led Innovation in an Australian Manufacturing Firm
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