Language Brokering: Stimulating Creativity during the Concept Development Phase

Abstract

To improve product styling and ergonomics, a growing number of companies are exploring new ways to involve design consultants in their innovation processes. Many studies have underlined the importance of designers in the innovation processes of successful companies, and some designers have achieved ‘superstar’ status. By capturing, recombining and integrating socio‐cultural knowledge and product semantics across social and industrial settings, designers can help create breakthrough product meanings. The relationship between briefs written by managers and solutions developed by designers is quite complex. Very often managers are unable to appropriately communicate and commercialize new products and services conceptualized by designers because they know only the final output of the innovation process rather than its entire story. The Language Brokering Process can enrich the dialectic between managers and designers, and consequently, it can improve both current and future innovation projects. This methodology elucidates the structure and process adopted by several designers and also illustrates an effective framework for communicating choices to managers. We present results from a student application of this methodology in the development of a new product‐service system for Aquarius (a brand of the Coca‐Cola Group) for two target demographics: ‘desperate housewives’ and ‘young adults’.