D4I HTK - Design for Innovation How to Kit

Design for Innovation How To Kit

To date, there does not appear to be a tool for assessing a company’s orientation to Design. A process we coin coin as Design Orientation. While other types of business orientations abound such as Entrepreneurial Orientation, Technological Orientation, and Market Orientation, Design Orientation captures the operational aspects of an enterprise’s knowledge, thinking, investment, and application of design across four broad areas: Entrepreneurial Innovation, Market Focus, Firm Performance, and Environmental & Social/Community sustainability. Case Studies in Design.

Nathan and Simon from the DayEight team worked with 5Rings to develop what appears to be a world-first self-assessment tool to assess how the respondents business uses design, providing tips and resources including case studies, articles and links to organisations that are ready, willing and able to provide assistance to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to help them build their business’ design capabilities.

The task was to research, develop and produce an online, quick measurement tool for businesses from multiple industries to self evaluate, uncover a current position on a ‘Design Ladder’, and equip with resources to better utilise design for greater innovation and firm wealth.

Process
Together we employed its deep knowledge of research and development to the development phase, resulting in an eight-step scale development and validation process, from ‘construct definition’, to ‘pilot testing of the scale’ and ‘evaluation’.

We worked closely with an expert working group, comprising of members from the Design Insititute of Australia (DIA), Australian Graphic Design Associagtion (AGDA), Deloitte, TANK, Department of Innovation, Industry and Regional Development (DIIRD), and Media Communications, RMIT University.
Once the tool was developed, we developed a suite of tips, strategies and resources for respondents to ‘move up’ the Design Innovation ladder to create more firm wealth, including written and audio/ video case studies produced by the 5Rings team.

Result
The team researched, developed and produced a world-first tool for measuring the sophistication of an SME’s design use for the Victorian Government, and global design sector. The tool is freely available to any business, and can culminate in improvements for respondents in the following key areas; competitive edge, market focus, entrepreneurial innovation, firm effectiveness, and environmental / social responsibility.
The tool also resulted in the creation of a new ‘Design For Innovation’ website to house all Design Innovation resources.

We also delivered a detailed statistical breakdown of how design is used in Victorian businesses for use across Design Victoria communications.  Some highlights include:

• 35% of businesses state that design has contributed to increased employment.  
• 71.8% of companies are more likely to employ external design consultant(s) on an ad hoc basis.
• Almost half would love to increase use of design in their business.
• The majority of enterprises report spending up to $100k on design p.a.

This was accompanied by a series of six supporting case studies of Victorian-based businesses, that use design to enhance business performance, including Monash IVF, Koko Black, South East Water, Synergetics, Fixadeck and OnProductPublishing.  An interview protocol was developed, with interviewees filmed, and edited into an informative Youtube video available online as a key resource for businesses and designers to enhance their design capability.