Implementation of design culture as a strategic innovation through design-oriented industrial conversion and product diversification

Italian manufacturing companies, SMEs in particular, are lately experiencing a context of great economic uncertainty. Therefore, achieving high levels of flexibility concerning changes in consumption and demand is necessary to increase competitive advantage. The discipline of Design can play an essential role in addressing the challenge of perceiving unexpected change and managing new market visions through new products. The doctoral research concerns a qualitative/quantitative analysis of design-driven industrial conversion and product diversification; both business strategies aim to share company risk in crisis, production inefficiency, or change in technological paradigms through updating and expanding the product portfolio. The PhD research has adopted the Research through Design as the methodological approach, and in addition, a specific methodology is defined for guiding the experimentation phase. Indeed, the research includes a testing phase with two model companies of Turin and its province (as the Turin Chamber of Commerce founds the doctoral research) concerning a path to accompany a design-oriented production diversification or industrial conversion. The design culture and typical design methods, enriched with those of Innovation Management, create interdisciplinary support for reading the local and corporate production context. The research is currently in the experimentation phase through the “Design in Progress” project, where two companies with different degrees of design orientation are encouraged to diversify their product portfolio through Design and technology-driven processes. The final objective of the PhD research is to define good practices for efficient production diversification or, in more extreme cases, industrial conversion, adaptable and scalable according to company needs. So far, the main results achieved in two years are 1. Five semi-structured interviews with companies; 2. A database with more than 60 case studies of Design-driven industrial conversion; 3. A classifying framework of case studies to display trends in common; 4. A collection of insights from interviews, preliminary desk research and the framework; 5. An analysis of the evolution of the manufacturing landscape in Piedmont, the region in the northwest of Italy, to explore possible new design-oriented sectors. 6. An interdisciplinary methodology to measure the propensity for design-led industrial conversion 7. The launch of the “Design in Progress” project, an experiment to bring two companies in Turin and its province closer to design 8. A literature review focused on: Research through Design, Design and territory, Territorial economy, Design and Innovation Management, Industrial conversion and product diversification. In parallel to the “Design in Progress” project, a collaboration is underway with a Dutch university to test the path to design for manufacturing companies with young researchers and design students. In particular, a focus group with young researchers to test, expand, and modify the experimentation tools and a workshop with design students to simulate the experimentation path. These results warrant further investigation with a larger perspective. The doctoral research is currently exploring the strategies of industrial conversion and production diversification towards new products; further research with more focus on the dematerialization of production through services, also in a circular economy perspective, is therefore suggested.