The Open Paradigm in Design Research

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Introduction The shift from closed to open paradigms in new product development is seen as an emergence of new forms of production, innovation, and design.1 Innovation processes are shifting from open source software to open source hardware design. Emulating open source software, design information for open source hardware is shared publicly to enhance the development of physical products, machines, and systems.2 Similarly, the rise of the “maker culture” enhances product tinkering,3 while the do-it-yourself (DIY) movement embraces “the open” in design.4 Users participate in design via crowdsourcing and co-creation on platforms such as OpenIdeo and Quirky and by joining proliferating open innovation challenges.5 At the back end of the design process, customers are invited to participate in mass customization and personalization to personalize products.6 The open paradigm has received scholarly attention through studies of open source software7 and open source hardware.8 Moreover, user engagement in the design process has been studied as user-centric innovation,9 participatory design,10 and codesign,11 as well as customer co-creation and crowdsourcing.12 However, the “open” landscape in design lacks consensus regarding a unified definition for open design practices. This lack of agreement partially results from the gap in approaches to design. Studies of innovation and new product development are focused on user-centric approaches and customer engagement in several stages of the design process, whereas current definitions of open design are focused on openness of technical design information and largely exclude, in particular, the early stages of the design process. The open design definitions also lack the commercial aspects of openness. Thus, the existing definitions are too narrow to holistically represent the shift from a closed paradigm to an open paradigm in design. Moreover, the lack of clarity and consistency in definitions is hindering the development of open design as a design approach. To fully advance the research on methods and practices, a more comprehensive perception of openness in the design process is needed. 1 See, e.g., Henry Chesbrough, “Open Innovation: A New Paradigm for Understanding Industrial Innovation,” in Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm, ed. Henry Chesbrough, Wim Vanhaverbeke, Joel West, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 1–34; Henry Chesbrough, Open Services Innovation: Rethinking Your Business to Grow and Compete in a New Era (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011, Kindle edition); Eric von Hippel, Democratizing Innovation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005); Yochai Benkler, “Coase’s Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm,” Yale Law Journal 112 (2002): 371–446. 2 Christina Raasch, Cornelius Herstatt, and Kerstin Balka, “On the Open Design of Tangible Goods,” R&D Management 39, no. 4 (2009): 382–93. 3 Chris Anderson, Makers: The New Industrial Revolution (New York: Crown, 2012). 4 Hilde Bouchez, “Pimp Your Home: Or Why Design Cannot Remain Exclusive—From a Consumer Perspective,” The Design Journal 15, no. 4 (2012): 461–78. 5 Lars Bo Jeppesen and Karim R. Lakhani, “Marginality and Problem-Solving Effectiveness in Broadcast Search,” Organization Science: Articles in Advance 21, no. 5 (2010): 1016–33. 6 Fabrizio Salvador, Pablo Martin de Holan, and Frank Piller, “Cracking the Code for Mass-Customization,” Sloan Management Review 50, no. 3 (2009): 71–78. 7 Eric von Hippel and Georg von Krogh, “Open Source Software and the ‘PrivateCollective’ Innovation Model: Issues for Organization Science,” Organization Science 14, no. 2 (2003): 209–23. 8 Sanne van der Beek, “From Representation to Rhizome: Open Design from a Relational Perspective,” The Design Journal 15, no. 4 (2012): 423–42. 9 von Hippel, Democratizing Innovation, 17.