Abstract
IBM CEO Tom Watson made the claim, that ‘Good design is Good Business’ at one of the first Aspen conferences on design in the 1950s (Watson and Petre, 1991). It seems generally accepted, that companies such as Apple, Alessi and SONY have gained competitive advantages from design (Dumas and Mintzberg, 1989; Kotler and Rath, 1988). Books like ‘Winning by Design’ (Walsh et al. 1992) and magazines like Business Week and newspapers such as the Financial Times have promoted the claim that investment in design as well as simply using good design enhances the competitiveness of firms. With a few notable exceptions (Blaich and Blaich, 1993; Gemser and Leenders 2001; Hertenstein, Platt and Veryzer, 2005), however, there is very limited evidence for such claims. In addition the concept of design is not well-defined and is often regarded as a superficial and superfluous fashion.
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