Design-driven innovation in design practice

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate Verganti’s framework for design-driven innovation (DDI) in the context of design practice and to discuss, elaborate and deepen the understanding of DDI, especially on aspects related to design. To meet this aim, an in-depth longitudinal case study of a DDI project for developing a radical new vision for an offshore ship bridge concept is performed. DDI is generally recognised as an in-depth research process, but we also approach it as a highly creative, generative process of design in which design artefacts serve as knowledge production and exploration. Therefore, Verganti’s divide between research and creativity and his critique of user centredness are challenged. The paper adds complementary understandings to Verganti’s framework, particularly regarding the role of design, and the Generative Design-Driven Innovation framework is developed.

Full text

Helge Tor Kristiansen and Anne Haugen Gausdal Design-driven innovation in design practice
www.FormAkademisk.org 1 Vol.11 Nr.5, 2018, Art 2, 1-18
https://doi.org/10.7577/formakademisk.1856
Helge Tor Kristiansen and Anne Haugen Gausdal
Design-driven innovation in design practice
The case of designing a ship-bridge vision
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to investigate Verganti’s framework for design-driven innovation (DDI)
in the context of design practice and to discuss, elaborate and deepen the understanding of
DDI, especially on aspects related to design. To meet this aim, an in-depth longitudinal case
study of a DDI project for developing a radical new vision for an offshore ship bridge concept
is performed. DDI is generally recognised as an in-depth research process, but we also
approach it as a highly creative, generative process of design in which design artefacts serve
as knowledge production and exploration. Therefore, Verganti’s divide between research and
creativity and his critique of user centredness are challenged. The paper adds complementary
understandings to Verganti’s framework, particularly regarding the role of design, and the
Generative Design-Driven Innovation framework is developed.
Keywords: Design-driven innovation, maritime industry, offshore ship bridge, generative
design-driven research framework.
Introduction
Innovation is currently regarded as important for companies and nations as a means to remain
competitive. Within innovation, designers’ competency and reasoning have increasingly gained
the attention of business managers and management scholars, like in the notion of “design
thinking” as advocated by Tim Brown (2008, 2009) and Roger Martin (2009, 2011). In recent
years, several national and international working committees, e.g. in Denmark (Danish
Enterprise & Construction Authority, 2011) and Ireland (Lawlor, O’Donoghue, Wafer, &
Commins, 2015), and by the European Commission (European Commission, 2013; European
Design Innovation Initiative, 2012), have also highlighted design as a competitive advantage.
In addition to design thinking (Rowe, 1987), new terms, such as Design-Inspired Innovation
and Design-Driven Innovation (DDI) have emerged. In the book Design-Inspired Innovation
(Utterback et al., 2006), several researchers show how design is considered an impetus for
innovative capability.
Although DDI is in frequent use, the term is not necessarily easy to define. The
fundamental idea, however, seems to be a focus on how design can be the catalyst for new ideas
that may be taken into the more traditional innovation processes (Acklin, 2010). Others have
argued that DDI is a special mind-set in which designers can play an important role, which also
needs to be understood at a managerial level (e.g. Verganti, 2009). Verganti is regarded as one
of the most prominent current DDI researchers, and his work (2003, 2006, 2008, 2011a, 2011b)
is widely acknowledged in the research community, especially among management scholars.
His book Design-Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically
Innovating What Things Mean (2009), in which the DDI framework is proposed, is one of the
most cited within this research field.

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Verganti's (2009) DDI framework justifies its importance by offering a business and
managerial-oriented innovation agenda. It seems, however, more negligent regarding the role
of design, as also stated by Eggink and Van Rompay (2015). There is, of course, research that
has purported to elaborate on DDI, e.g. Rylander (2010), who unpacked DDI as an aesthetic
experience, or Rampino (2011), who presented an innovation pyramid in the field of product
design in which the DDI process is analysed in types of results. Furthermore, de Goey,
Hilletofth, and Eriksson (2017) have taken design-driven innovation to other contexts, e.g.
business-to-business, and Jahnke and Johansson-Sköldberg (2014) have studied companies that
successfully integrated design into their operations. Nevertheless, most of this research seems
to either accept Verganti’s framework without further critique or debate or to just criticise it
without further elaboration or reasoning (Eggink & Van Rompay, 2015; Rasmussen,
Mortensen, & Jensen, 2012).
There seems to be a need for more practice-based studies that connect Verganti's (2009)
theoretical DDI framework (Figure 1) with design practice. The aim of this paper is, therefore,
to investigate and explore Verganti’s DDI framework in the context of design practice and to
discuss, elaborate and deepen the understanding of design-driven innovation, especially
regarding aspects related to design, and within a new context. To meet this aim, an in-depth
longitudinal case study of a design-driven innovation project within the Norwegian maritime
industry was conducted. More precisely, the case developed a concept for a radical new vision
for an offshore ship bridge. The project was performed by the Ulstein Power & Control
company and the Oslo School of Architecture and Design and was funded by the former
Norwegian Design Council (now DOGA) and the Research Council of Norway.
Figure 1: Verganti’s process of design-driven innovation. Source: Verganti (2009, p. 134).
The concept of DDI is used extensively in the research communities of management and design,
and this paper aims to contribute to both these streams of literature. This study is an attempt to
bridge some of the isolated silos that often exist within research.
Design and innovation
Designers’ creative way of thinking has gained great attention within innovation in the last
decades, especially among managers and management scholars (Kimbell, 2011). In the popular
managerial version of design thinking, the underpinning idea is that the way professional
designers approach problems through empathy, integrative thinking, optimism,
experimentalism and collaboration can be of great value to company innovation or to societal
changes (Brown, 2008; Kelley, 2004). Rowe (1987) provides one of the earliest discussions of
the concept of design thinking, and Rittel (1987) described the reasoning of design as far more
disorderly than, for example, design engineering (Dynn, Agogino, Eris, Frey, & Leifer, 2006).
The critical look at the design thinking discourse by Johansson-Skoldberg, Woodilla, and

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Cetinkaya (2013) suggests that the notion of design thinking has been divided into a managerial
version within business, as mentioned above, and a designerly version in the realm of design
research (Buchanan, 1992; Cross, 2006, 2011; Krippendorff, 2006; Lawson, 2006).
In innovation processes, the creative element is regarded as central (Salter & Alexy, 2014), but
what constitutes the concept creativity is not necessarily clear. It is in widespread everyday use
and can be described as the ability to produce work that is both novel (original, unexpected)
and appropriate (i.e. useful) (Sternberg & Lubart, 1999). There is currently no single theory that
is agreed upon to describe creativity (Kozbelt, Beghetto, & Runco, 2010), but most creativity
researchers and psychologists seem to believe that innate creative talent is overrated and that
creativity is largely a result of hard work – meaning no magic and no secret (Sawyer, 2006).
When it comes to the act of creation, the creative process has been studied by psychologists for
decades. Today, psychologists widely hold that creativity tends to occur in four (or more)
recognisable phases or stages, described as preparation, incubation, illumination, and
verification (evaluation and elaboration) (Kneller, 1965; Sawyer, 2006). Although this model
may appear almost linear, most researchers consider this process as rather cyclical (Sawyer,
2006). Sawyer (2011) has developed an integrated framework that captures a review of eight
key stages of various creative process models.
Edeholt (2007) argued that designers can be valuable to innovation because their
approach to ambiguous or wicked problems is to come up with solutions that can be explored,
tested and critiqued. The designers’ strengths are their reasoning, methods and tools especially
developed for the purpose of exploring several and diverse sets of alternative solutions. These
design methods and tools, including rapid prototyping, CAD-based simulation, high-fidelity
renderings and real-time graphics, make it possible to quickly and cheaply generate a wide array
of ideas for further selection (Kristiansen & Nordby, 2013). In addition, designers listen and
search for interesting, relevant and inspiring facts and thoughts in their investigations. In this
way, the subjective designer becomes a filter in his or her investigation through preferences,
values, beliefs and desires (Hekkert & Dijk, 2011).
Buchanan (1992) argued that there is possibly no single definition that adequately
covers design, and nor is it our purpose to enter this discussion here. One definition describes
design as “the ability to imagine that-which-does-not-yet-exist, to make it appear in concrete
form as a new, purposeful addition to the world” (Nelson & Stolterman, 2012, p. 12). In this
understanding, design can, of course, be something performed by people other than designers.
But designers trained in industrial design, for example, perform a craftsmanship learned in the
tradition of handmade practice in their design work, and the outcome of this craftsmanship is
often manifested in sketches and prototypes (Edeholt, 2007). Designers are also, like artists,
expected to bring in issues and concerns to the process other than mere problem solving
(Lawson, 2006). In the search for what to create, practicing designers frame and reframe, build,
test and refine artefacts for exploration (Dorst, 2011; Ulrich, 2011) – a design process often
referred to as conceptual design (Kristiansen, 2014; Nordby, 2010).
Design-driven innovation (DDI)
An extensive literature review showed how design-driven innovation and product meaning have
entered the discussion based on Verganti’s (2003) introduction of DDI as a managerial strategy
for radical innovation (De Goey, Hilletofth, & Eriksson, 2016). Verganti (2003) is a
management scholar who, by extensive studies of design-intensive Italian manufacturing
companies, discovered that radical innovations often entail an innovation process that focusses
on how to come up with a new interpretation of a product’s meaning. Verganti denoted such
innovation processes as DDI, which was launched as complementary to other innovation
theories, not as a replacement tout-court. DDI sees design as a contribution to innovation
through creating meaning, such as other drivers like technology or market (Verganti &

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Dell’Era, 2014). The user-centred perspective, as found in design thinking, is criticised as not
fully capturing the rich contribution of design to innovation (Jahnke & Johansson-Sköldberg,
2014) because people are not searching only for new solutions to existing problems (Öberg &
Verganti, 2014). According to Norman and Verganti (2014), user-centred design (UCD) or
human-centred design (HCD) methods are weak regarding radical innovation.
Verganti (2009) argued that design-intensive companies enjoy competitive success because
they have the ability to envision a radical innovation in a product’s meaning, e.g. the Nintendo
Wii, a game console with motion-sensitive controllers that allows people to play games by
moving their bodies. Nintendo did not invent the motion-sensitive controllers, but they
envisioned how they could use this technology to transform game consoles from an immersion
in a virtual world approachable only by experts into an active workout for everyone. No one
asked for this new meaning, but everyone loved it once they saw it. Verganti (2009) also argued
that this shows a mind-set in which the product developers and design managers shifted their
focus from the users; they stepped back and searched for a radical new visionary interpretation,
a new why. He further argued that radical innovation means proposing a new understanding
into the users’ world instead of asking them what they need. The public does not ask for
anything; rather, the visionary companies are the ones offering them something, making new
proposals (Verganti, 2009).
Furthermore, Verganti (2009) criticised design thinking and claimed that managers
embracing design thinking are too focused on a codified, step-by-step manual that can lead to
quick radical ideas for new products for commercialisation. Moreover, in order to produce
radical new innovations, a company’s top managers need to become immersed in what he
termed the design discourse, an exclusive design circle of radical researchers and key
interpreters that are explicitly and implicitly engaged in a continuous dialogue in which they
exchange insights, interpretations and proposals in the form of artwork, studies, speeches,
prototypes and products (Verganti, 2009).
Verganti’s (2009) DDI process is rooted in three actions: listening to, interpreting and
addressing the design discourse, which he further described as:
• Listening to the design discourse: This action entails accessing knowledge about possible
meanings and languages of new products. It implies understanding where this knowledge
is and how to internalize it. And it requires continuously identifying and attracting key
interpreters in the design discourse.
• Interpreting: This action entails generating your own vision and proposal for a radical new
meaning and language. It implies integrating and recombining knowledge gleaned from
the design discourse, as well producing novel interpretations. It requires that you conduct
internal research and experiments.
• Addressing the design discourse: This action entails diffusing your own vision to
interpreters. You may benefit from their seductive power and thus eventually influence
how people give meaning to things. It implies defining the most appropriate means through
which interpreters can discuss and internalize new proposal. (Verganti, 2009; p. 133)
To Verganti (2009), the radical researchers and key interpreters in the design circle are not
necessarily designers. DDI is not designer-driven innovation. Hiring a bunch of designers does
not guarantee anything, but:
…designers are an essential voice in the design discourse and may be among the primary
contributors to an innovation project. However, they are never the sole interpreters.
(Verganti, 2009; p. 139)

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Verganti (2009) described DDI as a research process in which knowledge and interpretations
are fed into the creation of a new vision and proposal. Such processes are exploratory, aiming
at creating an entire breakthrough product family or new business, and occur before product
development, as known in traditional industrial design. This is illustrated in Figure 2. Design-
driven research processes consist of a deep investigation, like technological research, that
“escapes attempts to imprison innovation in simple, sequential ten-step rules” (Verganti, 2009,
p. 172). Moreover, Verganti (2009) asserted that radical innovations are not the sudden result
of a spark of creativity but, rather, the result of years of research.
Figure 2: The process of design-driven innovation as research and its position relative to other phases
of innovation. Source: Verganti (2009, p. 173)
In the current study Verganti’s DDI framework is chosen as the foundation for comparison
because of many similarities and touching points with the case project.
Method
The empirical data used here stems from an extensive, longitudinal, in-depth single case study
of one DDI research project that developed a concept for a radical new vision for an offshore
ship bridge. In order to start with an open mind and an anthropological approach, no
assumptions or hypotheses were made before entering the project (Bryman, 2008). In this
respect, the research design remained flexible, which means that the details of the procedures
were not fixed in advance and that the research focus was liable to change during the project’s
evolvement (Robson, 2002). An emphasis was, however, placed on the discovery of knowledge
rather than on verification. As a research mode, this can be seen as a methodological approach
that is based on grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967); however, where grounded theory
prescribes rigor, this project has, in line with Denzin and Lincoln (2011), been more open
regarding its use of methods, theories and perspectives.
The primary data were collected through a combination of ethnography or participative
observation (Bryman, 2008) and qualitative interviews (Kvale, 1996). The first author
endeavoured to immerse himself in the social settings of the project team and spent about 720
hours in the design research lab. As an electrical engineer and Human-Computer Interaction
(HCI) specialist with knowledge and skills from the maritime industry, he was accepted as an
integrated participant. He contributed with field work on offshore vessels and participated in
the ad-hoc design discussions, although he did not perform any active design work. This
insider’s perspective contributed the research-by-design approach to the project (Sevaldson,
2008). The rationale behind this research perspective was to be as close to the actors as possible,
instead of just being an outside observer. The observations were recorded in 382 fieldnotes,
blogposts and reflection notes. A total of 186 interviews were performed, including 154 open,
unstructured interviews and 32 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with interview guides.

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Finally, 56 video recordings and about 1,500 images were captured, functioning mostly as
visual memory aids for further reference when needed. Most of the data collection was
performed between 2011 and 2013, although four interviews were conducted later to clarify
interpretations.
The active participation and direct access and immersion with the project’s DDI team
provided a deep insight and understanding of what constitutes the complex and fuzzy nature of
a practice-led, design-driven research process. Due to the close researcher involvement, the
interaction with the team’s participants became natural, and the mundane design activities and
ad-hoc conversations became accessible in a natural way.
Throughout the entire research period, the collected data went through a continuous
spiral of analysis. The data management and reading, interpreting, classifying, describing,
visualising and representing meanings were carried out through organising the material,
reflecting on it, writing notes and blogposts searchable for later connections, making
comparisons to relevant theory, making categories and relating this to the actual contexts
(Creswell, 2007). The research process also became an ongoing activity of matching between
the theoretical and the empirical world and between the analytical framework and the case
(Dubois & Gadde, 2002). Through this activity and analysis, interesting touch points with
Verganti’s (2009) framework emerged and became one way of discovering new insight
regarding the case as a DDI project.
For the purpose of comparison in an inductive analysis (Miles, Huberman, & Saldaña,
2014), the DDI framework (Verganti, 2009) was summarised into four main categories: Mind-
set, Design Discourse, Design-Driven Capabilities and Role of Executives. Design Discourse
was further divided into three sub-categories: Listening, Interpreting and Addressing. The
degree to which the case project had touch points with these DDI categories is presented in
Error! Reference source not found.. The terms used represent a coarse synthesis of an
extended DDI framework and naturally compress Verganti’s thorough and diverse research into
overly simplistic categories. Table 1 is a condensed version of the analysis and is proposed as
one way to organise and understand the DDI framework related to the case under study.
As a qualitative case, statistical generalisations were not accessible. However, case
studies may definitely contribute to analytical generalisations and thereby influence theory
(Dubois & Gadde, 2002; Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 1984). Moreover, in-depth single cases provide
opportunities to explore and richly describe the existence of a phenomenon (Siggelkow, 2007).
The Case
The case is the Ulstein Bridge Concept (UBC) project. The point of departure for this project
comprised the practitioners and researchers at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design
(AHO) searching for a closer collaboration with the Norwegian maritime industry. The
maritime industry was chosen because it constitutes an important field of national industrial
development and is traditionally known to be dominated by the disciplines of engineering. The
collaborating company, Ulstein Power & Control (UPC), belongs to the family-owned Ulstein
Group ASA. Ulstein Group ASA is a group of maritime companies specialising in ship design
and maritime solutions, shipbuilding, power and control, as well as shipping (ulstein.com). The
UBC project started as a Design-Driven Innovation Program and was carried out from March
to December 2010. This programme was intended as a means to stimulate the use of design in
the early phase of innovation. The project was later developed further into an innovation project
funded by the Research Council of Norway with a total research period of three and half years.
The core project team consisted of nine people doing their research and practical design
work in the dedicated UBC design research lab on the premises of AHO, which is illustrated in
Figure 3 and 5. Six team members were designers, one was a software engineer and two were
design researchers. The researchers and designers came from the fields of interaction, industrial,

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sound and graphic design, as well as from human factors and engineering. In addition to the
core team, domain users, employees and managers of Ulstein promoted the work internally and
externally and participated with their insights and expertise whenever needed.
The fundamental approach to fostering innovation in the UBC project was based on
design practice as an instrument of investigation and creation and on the belief that an early
strategic focus on design would stimulate new ideas and proposals for a new design vision that
could be taken further into traditional R&D and – ultimately – into commercialisation.
The project’s scope was to create a new design vision for a possible near-future offshore
ship bridge described at a conceptual level (Salter & Alexy, 2014). The developed vision turned
out to be quite radical, hence attracting a great deal of attention in the global maritime
community. The conceptual outputs resulted in several design ideas. Some of these where later
taken further for commercialisation, while several others were registered as patents. Other
significant results were a national innovation prize and several published research papers.
Further descriptions of the project are available in a video published at
https://vimeo.com/72330811 and at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design website
(http://designresearch.no/projects/ulstein-bridge-concept/about).
Figure 3: From the UBC design lab. Source: UBC.
Findings and discussion
The findings identified an in-depth research process in which several approaches were used and
facilitated by the project’s design team. Such approaches included user and industry expert
interviews and collaborative workshops that included users as well as sales, marketing business,
engineering and management at the Ulstein Group. Additional approaches included researching
documentation of today’s solutions, rules and regulations and investigating technology and
interaction solutions from other domains, etc. This work was combined with an extensive
amount of observation hours in the field (Lurås & Nordby, 2014; Nordby, Komandur, Lange,
& Kittilsen, 2011) in order to fully understand the nature of this particular domain, which is
infrequently accessible to the designers (Hutchins, 1995). Figure 4 shows a screenshot of a
video recording on an anchor handling vessel in operation.
When doing such fieldwork, the researchers and designers were inspired by techniques
and tools from the domain of ethnography, i.e. immersing themselves into the social settings of

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the users, observing their behaviour and listening to and engaging in conversations with the
mariners (Kristiansen, 2014). The fieldwork also included taking a huge number of photos and
video recordings to document the various bridge operations.
This in-depth investigation process also included a rich set of activities and social inter-
relations that were played out in the dedicated project space, the UBC design research lab. In
the UBC lab, an iterative process of generative creation of design artefacts served as a
manifestation of design ideas, providing further knowledge and insight into the specific domain
of offshore ship operations. Generative should here be understood as being capable of
producing or creating something. Through the creative process by which artefacts were created,
the designers gained further insight that served their search for the new vision. Dorst (2011)
referred to such processes as a complex abductive reasoning where there is no clear “what” to
create and, at the same time, no chosen “working principle”. Therefore, in the search for a new
vision that could lead to a possible innovation, what to create and how it should work needed
to be established in parallel. Therefore, the design-driven research work of UBC was recognised
as both thorough investigation and generative design work.
Figure 4. Field study on an offshore vessel in operation. Source: UBC.
In the case project, the creative and generative design-driven research work was manifested in
sketches and design artefacts, such as mock-ups and rapid prototyping made in the workshops
of AHO, high-fidelity renderings, CAD-based simulations and real-time graphics. The
importance of sketching is described, for example, by Buxton (2007), while the nature of
prototyping is discussed in Lim, Stolterman, and Tenenberg (2008). As an example, one of the
designers on the design team thoroughly investigated the concept of sitting, both in general and
specifically regarding the special user-related situation at the offshore bridge, where the
mariners might spend an entire shift of six hours supervising a demanding anchor handling
operation, as exemplified in Figure 4. The purpose for this investigation was to propose new
ways for the mariners to combine standing and sitting during such tedious, although safety-
critical work.
Another typical example is how the design team collaborated in the exploration of how
different interaction designs could interact with physical devices made by low-cost technology

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(e.g. Arduino), electric wiring and computer programming, as shown in Figure 5. In this way,
the UBC design research lab made it possible to explore and refine ideas. As one of the
designers put it, “You need to make new connections in your head…” and “use your experience
and subjective skills to create new combinations of possible solutions” (Research blog, 29
October 2013).
The UBC design research lab also provided a valuable maritime context, both for the
present and for the future, when the new design ideas were explored and placed into the
operational maritime context. The lab became an arena where the built prototypes, represented
in various forms and details, could be discussed and acted upon in conjunction and interrelation.
The possibility of investigating ideas through design action inspired and influenced everyone
in the project, and the lab became a realm where the relationships between design methods,
tools and outcomes became alive. This continuous process of reflection in action (Schön, 1991)
was shared among the design team through ad-hoc meetings and conversations about the
mediating artefacts. Here, the design research environment was taken to its extreme as a
generative exploration of the possible future (Binder et al., 2011). Through the generative work,
far-reaching and robust design concepts that both embodied and pointed to a desired future
bridge vision could be made, fit to challenge the existing paradigms in the maritime culture.
Figure 5. Prototyping in the UBC design research lab. Source: UBC.
In the reliance on design competence, the subjective designer was lifted up as a key component
in the design-driven research work. As argued by the UBC design manager, “the designer uses
himself as a filter, or prism, in his investigation” (Research interview, 26 April 2016).
According to him, designers have a wish to build desirable experiences for people through
technology and materials, and, in this, they are often known to immerse themselves into the
users’ cultural environment – in this case, the culture of professional mariners. But in order to
deal with the huge numbers of facts and factors that are often involved in such research work,
designers acknowledge the subjectivity in their design approach, where their personal values
and experience influence everything they do through preferences, values, beliefs and desires.

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Our informants saw this subjectivity as both an advantage and disadvantage but accepted it as
crucial to the design process.
The designers’ crafts of visualisation and prototyping were recognised as extremely
powerful in the generative design-driven research work of the case. This was seen in the design
mediation for internal collaboration within the UBC design team, in mediation between the
design team and the Ulstein managers and with externals when selected results were diffused
further to the maritime community. The video presented at the trade fare ONS in Stavanger
2012 is an example of this, and a screenshot of this video is shown in Figure 6. This video was
the first public presentation of the project and attracted great attention in the maritime industry.
Another example is the interactive demonstrator presented at Nor-Shipping in 2013, which is
illustrated in Figure 7. One of the project managers of Ulstein expressed the power of
visualisation and prototyping as follows: “You could have written page up and page down
without ever expressing what they did through these illustrations, films and animations. It
sounds simple, but it was quite ground-breaking in the way ideas were mediated” (Statement
made in a video published by the Norwegian Design Council, 2013).
Figure 6: Screenshot from the animated video Ulstein Bridge Vision, presented at ONS in Stavanger,
Norway. Source: UBC.

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Figure 7: The Ulstein Bridge Vision interactive demonstrator presented at Nor-Shipping. Source: UBC
The mind set of design-driven innovation
A condensed version of the case analysis is presented in Table 1. The symbols “=” and “<” are
used to indicate similarities or additions, respectively, to the understanding of DDI but should
not be perceived as absolute. The analysis shows recognisable similarities to Verganti’s (2009)
DDI framework but also suggests additions and elaborations. His fundament, though, based on
the definition of design as making sense (of things) is nothing new to design (Heskett, 2005;
Krippendorff, 1989, 2006) and will not be discussed further here. In addition, the systemic
approach needs more thorough attention and, therefore, remains outside the scope of this paper.
Table 1. A condensed presentation of the case analysis.

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= similarity of DDI < additions to the understanding of DDI

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The analysis suggests an in-depth research process in which creativity seemed to be a natural
and important part. This is in contrast to Verganti’s statement that such processes are not
creative in and of themselves but, rather, are more related to the process of engineering
(Verganti, 2009; Verganti & Dell’Era, 2014).
It is, however, not the aim of this paper to boldly argue that Verganti has been proven
wrong regarding creativity. Verganti probably used the term research in opposition to creativity
to emphasise the thorough nature of the work that lies behind the creation of a complete new
vision, something he emphasised as quite different from quick workshops or brainstorming,
which he believes are dominant in, for example, design thinking (Verganti, 2009). Other
studies, including contributions co-authored by Verganti, have also referred to creativity in
DDI, e.g. Dell’Era, Buganza, Fecchio, and Verganti (2011). The current case analysis definitely
supports Verganti’s claim of design-driven research as thorough. A bold, open and loosely
described design brief, as found in this project, demands a wide design approach and a
considerable quantity of resources. However, this paper also suggests that there is probably no
contradiction in describing such research work as creative and that design-driven research
should not be seen as something opposite to creativity. This argument is also supported by
Sawyer's (2011) framework, which presents a creative process as much more than mere
brainstorming, prototyping and testing.
Verganti has also argued that it is important to step back from the users when the aim is
radical innovation because users don’t necessarily know what they want until they are presented
with it (Verganti, 2009; Verganti & Dell’Era, 2014). Norman and Verganti (2014) took this
even further and argued that user-centred design (UCD) or human-centred design (HCD)
methods are weak regarding radical innovation. The need to step back from the users was
clearly recognised in this case as well. Although a lot of user-related activities were carried out
in the in-depth research process, most of the explorative work related to the development of the
new vision was performed in the UBC lab by the design team, usually without any user
involvement. Nevertheless, the designers in the project still seemed to be human centred. To
them, the mariners using the offshore ship bridge as their professional work area was
fundamental and at the centre of all their design considerations.
The rationales behind UCD or HCD are probably not equal in the various research
domains. Sanders and Stappers (2008) proposed a model from design research in which UCD
is seen as one mind-set amongst several in the larger landscape of HCD research. This
comprehensive understanding of HCD is one probable explanation for why the designers in the
UBC project made their assentation. Another can be found in Krippendorff's (2006)
presentation of human-centred design. According to him, the underlying thread in professional
designers’ self-perceptions is a concern for what people do with artefacts and, due to this, they
become advocates for users when they try to balance social, political, cultural and ecological
considerations. Verganti used Krippendorff's (1989) definition of design, and his arguement
that humans do not see and act on the physical qualities of things but on what they mean to
them. Krippendorff (2006), however, declared his statement to be axiomatic to a human-centred
design discourse. This might imply that Norman and Verganti’s (2014) division between
human-centred design and design as the change of meaning can be challenged. In the realm of
design practice, human centeredness is not necessarily the same as just asking what the users
want and then giving it to them.
Create new visions as a generative process of design
Verganti (2009) argued that interpretation is when knowledge is fed into a process that can
create a new vision and proposal. He further described this as integrating and recombining
knowledge into a deep investigation through exploration and experiments. One suggested

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method is design direction workshops, which he described as processes of envisioning, sharing,
connecting, selecting and embodying.
In this case study, this deep investigation through exploration and experiments was recognised
as a natural process of design (Heskett, 2005) in which the designers used their design methods,
skills and techniques as in any other design activities. The main differences seemed to be the
open and bold aim of the project and how the UBC design research lab was used to thoroughly
investigate this vision. The design team of the UBC project performed a generative, design-
driven research process in which the knowledge investigated and the prototypes built could be
discussed and acted upon in conjunction and interrelation with each other. This was further used
to create novel knowledge in order to strengthen the robustness of the new design vision. Instead
of design direction workshops, as proposed by Verganti, this was experienced as an on-going
process of what can be seen as conceptual design collaboration.
There is, of course, a significant difference between the creation of a new meaning for
consumer products, for example, and for a complex system of what constitutes a complete
offshore ship bridge. The most radical, innovative idea that emerged through the generative
design-driven research process in the case project was the changed interpretation of how the
ship bridge could be understood. The result was that an offshore ship bridge could now be
viewed as an integrated work area, and the aim of the bridge design would be to support
advanced maritime operations. This understanding replaced the traditional view of engineering,
in which advanced technological devices were just placed together wherever they could be fit
in. Interpreting the ship bridge as an integrated work area represented a holistic and systemic
approach with the consequence of the bridge needing to be designed as a whole. This new
interpretation also led to the vision of a new ship bridge where technological equipment could
be hidden and where the design focus became generating user experiences for the mariners.
Furthermore, it led to the idea that material and technology should be viewed as design materials
in themselves, as described by Nordby (2010).
The design discourse as a process of generative design-driven research work
Based on our findings, we have developed a new model, the generative design-driven
innovation (GDDI) processes model. This GDDI model, which is presented in Figure 8, is
proposed as complimentary to Verganti’s DDI process. It is an attempt to describe an additional
understanding of a generative design-driven research process and how the activities of listening,
interpreting and addressing can be connected to the activities and skills of designing. The
proposed GDDI model attempts to capture how the generative design-driven research process
can be understood as a process of design in which the aforementioned design methods and tools
are used in an effort to gain insight as well as to create and address a radically new design vision
through the evolving conceptual design artefacts, as exemplified in the UBC project.

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Figure 8. The Generative Design-Driven Innovation processes (GDDI) model. Source: the authors.
Sufficient management and resources are certainly needed in the DDI research processes, but
in the realm of design, creativity also seems to be central. Creativity, however, needs to be
understood as hard work through preparation, incubation, illumination, evaluation and
implementation, not solely as a quick spark of inspiration. The generative activity that becomes
manifest through evolving conceptual design artefacts then becomes crucial. When the design
brief is rather loose, as is often the case when the goal is to reach a radical new interpretation,
this generative design activity also provides the mediation of design knowledge and design
direction among the project’s participants and managers.
Verganti has highly emphasised the role of managers, and our findings confirm the
importance of the top managers’ commitment and support, both internally to the design team
and externally when diffusing the company’s vision – a vision that needs further research and
development in order to be realised as a desirable, reliable and safe system. The role of
management was not studied in this case study, but the analysis still suggests that the generated
design artefacts seemed to have an essential role in the mediation of the new vision to the
managers of Ulstein.
This paper does have some limitations. It could be argued that the comparison with
Verganti’s DDI framework is problematic because his empirical base is confined to consumer
products rather than facing the immense task of redefining an entire complex holistic system,
like the offshore ship bridge. The case process also went across boundaries where several sub-
suppliers are usually involved. This conglomerate of businesses and technologies could have
an impact on how Verganti’s model was understood when used as an analytic reference for
UBC as a complex industry project. However, several of Verganti’s fundamental descriptions
and reasonings remain familiar and recognisable within the case. Furthermore, the basic
principle seems to remain the same, i.e. plunging into an in-depth investigation of the meaning
of a new product. Therefore, we claim that the comparison is relevant.
It can also be argued that a single longitudinal, in-depth case study constitutes a weaker
empirical base than Verganti’s ten-year-long research on design-intensive Italian companies.
Nevertheless, a single case provides the opportunity for unusual research access, as it allows
exploration in a specific population (Yin, 1984). The aim of the paper is not to generalise but,
rather, to show powerful examples from a practice based study, and the qualitative nature of
this study serves to sustain a more convincing argument about causal forces than broad
empirical research (Flyvbjerg, 1991; Siggelkow, 2007). Furthermore, the empirical data in the
UBC case is rather vast and is presented by some thick descriptions (Geertz, 1973). In addition,
some may question whether the insider perspective influenced the study’s validity. Design-

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driven research processes involve a large number of stakeholders, requirements, conditions and
implications, all of which interact in complex and contradicting ways (Sevaldson, 2008). While
understanding this complex process from the outside is almost impossible, the insider’s role has
provided this study with an extra dimension of in-depth insight as well as an unusual research
approach aimed at understanding the DDI process. The insider perspective of one author is,
therefore, regarded here as a valuable and unique resource. We argue that the validity, which is
based on the argumentation and reasoning as suggested by Giere (1991), is acceptable. The
open-minded approach was necessary at the outset to venture the suggestion that UBC be
compared with Verganti’s DDI framework. However, a more stringent research design may
have provided other insights.
Conclusion
The aim of this paper was to explore, discuss, elaborate and deepen the understanding of
Verganti’s DDI framework, especially regarding design-related aspects. The case shows
recognisable similarities to Verganti and examples that can enrich his framework, but it also
proposes some additional aspects as complements. We argue that Verganti seems to have
created an artificial divide between research and creativity when analysed from the realm of
design practice. It also seems that Verganti’s design-driven research process can be understood
as a highly creative and generative process of design, a process that, in this case, we argue is
user centred. Verganti mentioned professional designers as important interpreters, whereas this
case implies that the subjective designer, and his or her activity and capability of designing,
seemed rather crucial. This insight was used to create the generative design-driven innovation
(GDDI) processes model, which can be considered a complement to Verganti’s DDI process
by describing an ongoing process of generative design-driven research through evolving
conceptual artefacts. The artificial division between research and creativity further implies that
the difference between incremental and radical innovation is not creativity in itself but whether
the project’s aim is visionary or not. This might suggest that Verganti’s critique of design
thinking and creative processes should instead emphasise that radical innovation needs
sufficient resources for design research combined with bold and visionary leadership for the
DDI process.
This paper has theoretical and practical implications. The main contributions to theory
are the enrichment of and complement to Verganti’s DDI framework, especially regarding
aspects related to design. First, the study applied the framework to a holistic, complex project
within an industry with limited design traditions. Second, the paper contributes to bridging the
gap between theory and the practice of DDI with examples from a practical design-driven
research process. Third, by launching the GDDI framework. The paper also contributes to
practice by showing DDI and design practice in a new combination, which may be useful for
managers as well as practicing designers and engineers.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to express their gratitude for the contributions
made by all the participants in the UBC project and give special
thanks to Ulstein Power & Control. The UBC project was funded
by The Research Council of Norway and Ulstein Power &
Control.
Helge Tor Kristiansen
Assistant professor

Helge Tor Kristiansen and Anne Haugen Gausdal Design-driven innovation in design practice
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Faculty of Technology, Natural Sciences and Maritime Sciences
University of South-Eastern Norway
Helge.Kristiansen@usn.no
Anne Haugen Gausdal
Professor
Faculty of Technology, Natural Sciences and Maritime Sciences
University of South-Eastern Norway
Anne.H.Gausdal@usn.no

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