The value of design as a means of innovation has long been recognized. More recently, interest in how design can create value has moved from a functional to a strategic focus whereby the design concept defines the way in which the whole firm competes. This is known as “design orientation,” although research on the nature of this construct remains scarce. In this exploratory study to define and unpack the nature of design orientation we follow the same process as previous research on orientations, through extrapolation from the sustained behaviours at firms that use design to drive their strategy. Empirically, we ground our definition in insights from design experts and senior managers (n = 62) within a diverse sample of “design-oriented” firms (n = 26). We identify that design orientation consists of an overarching ethos defined by four core emphases (connective, empathetic, future, and aesthetic), reflected in and reinforced by eight behaviours (catalysing, integrating, perspective taking, marrying logics, disrupting, future-proofing, design language, and brand reinforcing). In so doing, we define the design orientation construct and identify the strategic investments firms can use to leverage it for competitive advantage. We provide an agenda for future research and explore managerial challenges associated with implementation.@en

To date, customer education has been framed in terms of one-way information provision, at odds with much of the literature on meaning co-creation. Drawing on an ethnography of a specialty coffee purveyor, we show how staff and consumers co-create educational consumer journeys through the deployment of seven practices: auditing, realignment, marrying competing logics, negotiating scripts, evangelizing, expanding collective knowledge, and impression management. These practices require staff and consumers to enact three different educational roles (educator, student, and peer), which are necessary for the co-creation and extension of consumer journeys. The roles, practices and the journeys themselves emerge iteratively through sensebreaking, sensegiving, and sensemaking processes among staff, consumers and the servicescape. Our findings frame customer education as a dynamic process in which meaning is co-created between participants. Furthermore, the cues and touchpoints needed for meaning-making shift as power relations between participants change. Managerially, these findings highlight the potential of co-created educational consumer journeys to expand established market categories.@en

Streaming services are replete with stories of the dead coming back to life. They’re also chock-full with dead or almost dead brands. Shows like Stranger Things have not only given new life to 1980s pop classics like Kate Bush’s Running up that Hill, but also former tech icons such as Polaroid. One of Netflix’s latest shows goes beyond product placement by placing a dead brand, Blockbuster, at the centre of the drama. The story is set in the last Blockbuster retail outlet in the USA, and focuses on employees’ attempts to save the store, ironically in the face of the onslaught of Netflix. @en

Corporate branding researchers alert us to the importance of the internal aspects of brand building, in particular, how staff can be mobilized to ensure that the brand delivers on its promises to stakeholders. Internal branding programs help achieve alignment between the brand’s identity, purpose and promise and the behavior of its employees by developing greater brand engagement internally. Research suggests that consumers display greater brand engagement when they can place themselves in the brand’s narrative, that is, experience the brand’s claims as authentic. We propose that what holds for consumers also holds for employees and extend work on authenticity into the internal branding area. We explore the internal branding challenges in regards to three forms of authenticity: Consistency, conformity, and connection. Together these three forms of authenticity identify the need for programs that create alignment between external and internal messaging, enable employees to operate as a cultural insider with their target audience (and the context which surrounds them), and build connections between brand narratives and the collective historical identity of the firm and its employees. We conclude with a discussion of managerial implications and issues for future research.

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Consecration is the process by which producers in creative fields become canonized as “greats.” However, is this the end of the story? Research on consecration focuses on the drivers of consecration but pays little attention to the post-consecration period. Furthermore, the research ignores the dynamics of consecration. To address these gaps, we examine the changing fortunes of a consecrated artist – the musician Phil Collins. We identify the ways in which three actors (fans, critics, and peers) assemble for consecration, disassemble for deconsecration, and reassemble for reconsecration. Examining the changing public image and commercial fortunes of Collins as a solo artist between 1980 and 2020, we identify an N-shaped process of rise-fall-rise that we call the Phil Collins Effect. This effect offers a new way of thinking about how cultural producers gain, lose and regain status in their fields.@en

The piece is based on an article the authors have coming up in Research in the Sociology of Organisations.@en

The sharing economy represents a market-driven response to the perceived inefficient resource use arising from materialism, and as such, offers the possibility of a more environmentally sustainable form of consumption. However, the sustainability benefits attributed to the sharing economy remain contentious and fraught with paradox. Drawing on a critical discourse analysis of three sharing economy brands (Lime, Rent the Runway and BlaBlaCar) we identify that sustainability discourses compete with claims arising from the espoused benefits of immateriality and platform brands’ desire for rapid growth. We identify and explore three platform brand discourses (disrupting unsustainable leaders, guilt-free choice, and non-commercial appeals) and their associated practices. In doing so we identify that tensions between these discourses and practices give rise to three sustainability-related contradictions: displacement of sustainable alternatives, hidden materiality, and creeping usage. Our findings contribute to our understanding of the sharing economy and its role in sustainability.

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We examine the value of design thinking in times of crisis. Drawing on examples of firm innovations during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown, we propose that disruptive events represent wicked problems that require managers to break out of established patterns of thinking. Design thinking, or the problem solving approaches and tools of designers, represents one such approach. Drawing on extant research, we identify a three-stage process of design thinking: disrupt, develop and deliver, and transform. We examine each stage, identifying how careful disruptive thinking with a focus on understanding problems within their context can give rise to innovative solutions, resulting in a more resilient organisation.

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The case examines the strategies of Lovehoney, the UK’s largest seller of sexual wellness products, primarily driven by its own branded product range plus brand licenses such as the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise. Sexual wellness is not a new category; rather it is the name given to what was the sex toy and sex play market by new entrants keen to distance themselves from historic associations with pornography and a male tone of voice. A number of disruptive brands have entered into this market, leveraging design-driven innovations and branding with a clear feminine tone of voice, focused on appealing to holistic notions of wellness. One of the earliest of these was Lovehoney, a UK-based online retailer based in the historic spa town of Bath. The case focuses on the challenge of entering into the USA, a lucrative market for sexual wellness, but one requiring a different tone of voice to successfully penetrate.@en

The importance of the Front End of Innovation (FEI) for product innovation success is widely acknowledged. However, scholarly knowledge of how this messy “getting started” phase can best be managed remains fuzzy. One reason for the fuzziness is that extant work has used seemingly incompatible outcomes and antecedents as well as inconsistent definitions. The empirical evidence for several antecedents is conflicting, with more and more authors arguing that the FEI should be managed differently depending on project, industry or organizational characteristics. As a result of this debate in combination with the incompatible and even conflicting empirical evidence, we do not know whether overall antecedents of FEI management success actually do exist and, if so, what these factors are. To make an important step forward in resolving the fuzziness surrounding the successful management of the FEI, this study presents an overarching conceptual framework of the antecedents of FEI management success that distinguishes performance at the FEI and the overall product innovation project levels and tests this framework with a meta-analytic methodology. The analysis of 259 effect sizes from 80 independent samples obtained from 86 studies reveals 13 overall antecedents that are consistent indicators of FEI management success at both the FEI and the overall project performance levels and three antecedents that increase performance at either the FEI or the overall product innovation project level. The results indicate that the importance of many antecedents for either the FEI or the overall project levels varies significantly. For four expected antecedents no significant effect on FEI management success was found. These results allow product innovation managers to pay special attention to the antecedents that are most important in managing the FEI. Moreover, the findings have important implications for different fields of product innovation management theory.@en

Consumers are no longer passive recipients of products, but are actively involved in various stages of their creation from their design to their actual production. Regarding design, consumers can customize everything from t-shirts and shoes to shelves on their own, often using toolkits of configurators that help them in the process. A specific type of customization effort that has lately become pervasive is customized assembly, where consumers need to expend effort also in the production stage in order for their preferred designs to come to fruition. This makes customized assembly a particularly intriguing form of consumer participation because, ceteris paribus, consumers should welcome the opportunity to customize (a benefit) but avoid the effort of assembly (a cost). However, there is evidence to suggest that consumers also enjoy participating in the making of a good. This study examines whether customers’ satisfaction with customized assembly products is driven by their participation in their design (the “I designed it myself” effect) or their production (the “I made it myself” effect) by means of an experiment. In marked contrast to studies on customization, our results support the “I made it myself” effect over the “I designed it myself” effect - consumers want to be co-producers of good products, regardless of whether who designed it. Our results also indicate that the influence of designing on satisfaction is derived from self-expression provided by customization, whereas the influence making is mediated by the pleasure derived from co-production. These mechanisms operate in parallel to produce the satisfaction consumers experience toward the customized assembly product. For companies, knowing how consumers derive satisfaction from customized assembly products can provide valuable insight into crafting and positioning such products.@en

Subverting scripts can be critical to successful service innovation. However, deviating from firmly embedded scripts can be risky, because doing so can confuse and frustrate customers. Through an ethnographic study of a specialist coffee shop, we investigate customers’ responses to the introduction of a script that countervailed dominant category norms. Drawing upon the constitutive elements of design thinking, we find that three practices— destabilization, control, and adaptation—led to the successful subversion and replacement of the dominant scripts. While this initially disoriented customers, the three identified practices enabled adoption by supporting customers’ transition to the new script. This study is novel in examining the practices and processes necessary for effective script subversion, and reveals the importance of thorough understanding of both the dominant script and customers’ experience of it. Moreover, it provides evidence of design thinking’s role in prompting and enacting service innovation.@en