Which research in design creativity and innovation? Let us not forget the reality of companies

Abstract

Studying design creativity and innovation from practical perspectives for companies requires both a good understanding of the company ecosystem and its inner processes contributing to delivered innovations and a rigorous design research methodology to provide effective design models, methods, and platforms that are truly effective in the context of a company. Working in an industrial engineering laboratory, we advocate a more systemic vision of design creativity and innovation in company ecosystems. We present in this paper an attempt to develop and make professional an innovation engineering. Our research works are illustrated along the different research topics of an innovation process. We start by a recent survey on innovation practice and organizational models led in 28 large companies. The lessons learned about this survey reinforce our belief that there is a need for a new method in agile management of radical innovation projects in company contexts. We currently develop, test, and apply such a methodology named Radical Innovation Design ® (RID). Its effectiveness has been evaluated through a large-scale evaluation of the project outcomes for the company. Two extensions of RID have been proposed and deployed in company contexts: a selection procedure for innovation clusters and a value-driven process for airplane development projects.