Managing Innovation, Design and Creativity

Chapter 15. The effects of industry and cultural context

The concerns and issues in the Roche case study seem somewhat different from the ones of the earlier case studies. In the BBC case study the issues were about internal selling of an idea, about collaboration and to a certain degree about considering a multinational audience. The ihavemoved.com story was about branding and strategic flexibility. The Lotus Elise and the Quattro were about more traditional new product development related issues such as prototyping, internal and external collaboration, processes and market research. Most of the above are under the control or at least strong influence of the people within the organisation. Many of the influences in the development of saquinavir – industry regulations, pressure groups – were externally and mostly outside the influence of the people within the organisation. Understanding the context at four levels – national, industry, company and project - is an important part of innovation success. As we have already looked at company context in Chapter 6, this chapter will focus on the project, industry and national level.

WHY THINK ABOUT CONTEXT?

In recent years people have become increasingly aware of the importance of the context in which individual products are developed as an element that should be considered in shaping the design and development process. There are a wide range of factors that can – not necessarily will – have an influence on a product's design and development ...