Andrew Grantham

An innovation perspective on design: part 1

This paper analyzes innovation and design from a management and economic perspective. The management sciences, innovation studies, economics, and the social sciences in general have, traditionally, paid little attention to design as a core creative industrial and economic activity. This situation is now changing as innovation and management studies increasingly recognize the technical and wider role of design in business and economic activity. Within the social sciences, including management studies, one might think that one of the natural “homes” of design research and teaching would be innovation studies—a well-established subject area that focuses on the role of research and development (R&D), engineering, science, and technology in the economy. However, with the exception of a stream of important product development and design management research, this expectation is not fulfilled. As this paper makes clear, within mainstream innovation studies, design has been largely absent from theory, teaching, textbooks, and research. The purpose of this paper is therefore to provide an “innovation studies” perspective on design, focusing on design in business and the economy. This approach can be seen as part of a broader question of where design could be positioned within the social sciences as the subject expands across an increasingly wide range of business and social activity. Design potentially might thrive in many areas within the social sciences, including strategy, entrepreneurship, and marketing in the business management area, as well as in sociological, organizational science, and economic fields. In this paper we argue that by developing an innovation perspective on design, and a design perspective on innovation, both fields stand to gain. The idea of the paper is to critically examine the role of design in business and the economy from an innovation viewpoint. First, we provide definitions and perspectives on the terms, “design” and “innovation,” helping to define the boundary conditions of both subjects. Second, we assess the treatment of design in innovation studies. More often than not, design is either treated in passing or entirely overlooked. This section also asks why this neglect happens, given the recognized importance of design in innovation. Finally, we assess the design discourse from an innovation and social science perspective, showing how design as a human-centered, core creative activity in business challenges the overly scientific, rational view of the firm and many of the standard intervention tools of innovation management. Part 2 of this paper (in an upcoming issue of Design Issues) builds on this analysis to illustrate the gains that can be achieved by bringing the fields of innovation studies and design/design thinking closer together.

Getting the Measure of the Electronic Games Industry: Developers and the Management of Innovation

The electronic games industry has grown within the space of a decade to a

Information society: wireless ICTs’ transformative potential

40bn global industry. Yet, at least in the UK, the management of innovation in the software development sector reflects the industrys bedroom origins. Visits to major buyers in the US by UK games developers show that publishers increasingly require more sophisticated management procedures from developers, including that with respect to the management of innovation. This paper reports on the development of industry-specific indicators to be used in processes of innovation management, benchmarking innovation practices and performance within the framework of value chain analysis. This provides the sector with a framework for more routinised innovation practices, and is also of relevance to the management of innovation in other software-intensive sectors.

How networks explain unintended policy implementation outcomes: the case of UK rail privatization

Abstract This paper sets mobile technology and services against the backdrop of existing debates on ‘information’ and ‘post-industrial’ societies. This paper posits the suggestion that mobile technology has the potential to realise the information society aspirations of states in a way that information and communication technologies more generally have failed to do in recent years. Essentially, mobile services and the devices that enable access to them are becoming constitutive of the lives of users both in a work and a social dimension. This essential nature of the technology renders it different from on-line networking that has become a part of normal working environments in the developed world. The paper starts with a discussion on the meaning of the information society and post-industrialism (The coming of post-industrial society: a venture in social forecasting, Heinemann, London, 1974; The rise of the network society, Blackwell, Oxford, 2002; The wealth of information, Methuen, London, 1983) and considers criticisms (Inf. Commun. Soc. 3(2) (2000) 139; Theories of the information society, Routledge, London, p. 30) that they are unrealised constructs (in part because economies remain defined by manufacturing) and that the advocates’ primary definitions are meaningless. Moreover, in order to address the dangers of exclusion from the benefits of the technology utilisation, the paper considers the concept of ‘social exclusion’ in a bid to challenge policy-makers’ assertions that the information society—wireless or otherwise—can and will bridge the social divide. The paper concludes with a discussion on policy implications for the achievement of inclusivity and openness.

Transport policy paradigms at the local level:The Norwich inner ring road

How a government secures the implementation of its policies is one of the most interesting processes in public administration. The tendency of scholars is to ignore implementation and how it impacts on the form of policy, something which invariably changes once resources have been allocated to implementing agencies and the policy detail is addressed. Traditional ‘top-down’ (Pressman and Wildavsky 1984, Mazmanian and Sabatier 1981) and ‘bottom-up’ (Elmore 1979, Hjern and Porter 1981, Hull and Hjern 1983) analytical frameworks give only a partial explanation of outcomes. In making the case for a network approach, a typology of implementation networks is presented. The utility of this typology is evaluated in the context of one of the most complex privatization programmes attempted by any government: the privatization of British Rail (BR) between 1992 and 1997. In the case of the sale of one BR subsidiary train operating company, ScotRail, a variety of agencies with competing interests and acting in a politically-charged climate exchanged essential resources to deliver the policy, though not without generating unintended outcomes in the form of significant change to the policy and the agencies charged with implementing it.

A bridge over troubled waters: bridging organisations and entrepreneurial opportunities in emerging sectors

It has been claimed that transport policy in the UK, once a quiescent area, has been opened to battle between competing advocacy coalitions and that the late 1980s and early 1990s saw a policy paradigm shift. This article examines one detailed historical case study, the plans to complete an inner road in Norwich and the subsequent collapse of the scheme. The aim is firstly to examine the complex decision making processes and subsequent politics of this scheme and secondly to relate the local issue to the idea of a paradigm shift in national roads policy. The complexity of decision making in a multi-actored arena, where sovereignty is located locally but is circumscribed by central government ‘guidelines’, suggests that the assertions of those who argue in terms of a paradigm shift in policy may be exaggerated.