Roberto Verganti

In a world undergoing continuous change, organizations find themselves facing the challenge of how to keep innovating to stay competitive. Inside any organization, people are the cornerstone on which innovation rests and builds, yet it is ever more difficult to engage everyone in designing their organization. This book explores and discusses how employees can be engaged digitally to assist innovation initiatives and lead to organizational transformation.Storymaking and Organizational Transformation is based on the research activities of the platform IDeaLs during the year 2020 and provides a perspective on how employees can be helped to understand and even contribute to organizational innovation spontaneously. The book contributes to advancing understanding of engagement from two main perspectives: first, the authors introduce an approach based on storymaking; second, six cases are studied in depth and the application of the digital storymaking approach is explained. The authors introduce new ways of organizing in a context of ongoing change, as they bring forth the idea that engagement is a continuous practice of designing meaningful narratives which connect people and evolve along with them.The book will appeal to both academics and practitioners across management fields. Scholars of innovation management and organization sciences will benefit from the extensive review of organizational transformation and innovation from a sensemaking perspective, whilst the practical, case studies provide a valuable resource for practitioners looking to effect change and manage transformation.

In a world undergoing continuous change, organizations find themselves facing the challenge of how to keep innovating to stay competitive. Inside any organization, people are the cornerstone on which innovation rests and builds, yet it is ever more difficult to engage everyone in designing their organization. This book explores and discusses how employees can be engaged digitally to assist innovation initiatives and lead to organizational transformation.Storymaking and Organizational Transformation is based on the research activities of the platform IDeaLs during the year 2020 and provides a perspective on how employees can be helped to understand and even contribute to organizational innovation spontaneously. The book contributes to advancing understanding of engagement from two main perspectives: first, the authors introduce an approach based on storymaking; second, six cases are studied in depth and the application of the digital storymaking approach is explained. The authors introduce new ways of organizing in a context of ongoing change, as they bring forth the idea that engagement is a continuous practice of designing meaningful narratives which connect people and evolve along with them.The book will appeal to both academics and practitioners across management fields. Scholars of innovation management and organization sciences will benefit from the extensive review of organizational transformation and innovation from a sensemaking perspective, whilst the practical, case studies provide a valuable resource for practitioners looking to effect change and manage transformation.

When an innovation is inspired by design, it transcends technology and utility. The design delights the user, seamlessly integrating the physical object, a service, and its use into something whole. A design-inspired innovation is so simple that it becomes an extension of the user. It creates meaning and a new language.Design-Inspired Innovation takes a unique look at the intersection between design and innovation, and explores the novel ways in which designers are contributing to the development of products and services. The book's scope is international, with emphasis on design activities in Boston, England, Sweden, and Milan. Through a rich variety of cases and cultural prisms, the book extends the traditional design viewpoint and stretches the context of industrial design to question — and answer — what design is really all about. It gives readers tools for inspiration, and shows how design can change language and even create human possibilities.

When an innovation is inspired by design, it transcends technology and utility. The design delights the user, seamlessly integrating the physical object, a service, and its use into something whole. A design-inspired innovation is so simple that it becomes an extension of the user. It creates meaning and a new language.Design-Inspired Innovation takes a unique look at the intersection between design and innovation, and explores the novel ways in which designers are contributing to the development of products and services. The book's scope is international, with emphasis on design activities in Boston, England, Sweden, and Milan. Through a rich variety of cases and cultural prisms, the book extends the traditional design viewpoint and stretches the context of industrial design to question — and answer — what design is really all about. It gives readers tools for inspiration, and shows how design can change language and even create human possibilities.

A more powerful innovation, which seeks to discover not how things work but why we need things.The standard text on innovation advises would-be innovators to conduct creative brainstorming sessions and seek input from outsiders—users or communities. This kind of innovating can be effective at improving products but not at capturing bigger opportunities in the marketplace. In this book Roberto Verganti offers a new approach—one that does not set out to solve existing problems but to find breakthrough meaningful experiences. There is no brainstorming—which produces too many ideas, unfiltered—but a vision, subject to criticism. It does not come from outsiders but from one person's unique interpretation.The alternate path to innovation mapped by Verganti aims to discover not how things work but why we need things. It gives customers something more meaningful—something they can love. Verganti describes the work of companies, including Nest Labs, Apple, Yankee Candle, and Philips Healthcare, that have created successful businesses by doing just this. Nest Labs, for example, didn't create a more advanced programmable thermostat, because people don't love to program their home appliances. Nest's thermostat learns the habits of the household and bases its temperature settings accordingly.Verganti discusses principles and practices, methods and implementation. The process begins with a vision and proceeds through developmental criticism, first from a sparring partner and then from a circle of radical thinkers, then from external experts and interpreters, and only then from users.Innovation driven by meaning is the way to create value in our current world, where ideas are abundant but novel visions are rare. If something is meaningful for both the people who create it and the people who consume it, business value follows.

Until now, the literature on innovation has focused either on radical innovation pushed by technology or incremental innovation pulled by the market. In Design-Driven Innovation: How to Compete by Radically Innovating the Meaning of Products, Roberto Verganti introduces a third strategy, a radical shift in perspective that introduces a bold new way of competing. Design-driven innovations do not come from the market; they create new markets. They don't push new technologies; they push new meanings. It's about having a vision, and taking that vision to your customers. Think of game-changers like Nintendo's Wii or Apple's iPod. They overturned our understanding of what a video game means and how we listen to music. Customers had not asked for these new meanings, but once they experienced them, it was love at first sight. But where does the vision come from? With fascinating examples from leading European and American companies, Verganti shows that for truly breakthrough products and services, we must look beyond customers and users to those he calls "interpreters" - the experts who deeply understand and shape the markets they work in. Design-Driven Innovation offers a provocative new view of innovation thinking and practice.