Design Led Innovation in Consumer Product Start-ups

Team: Aldo Valencia, Matthew Lievesley, Bob Young, Alison Pearce (Northumbria University).

Timeframe: 2016-2019

Designers are recognised as natural entrepreneurs, due to their competences in the idea-generation and product development processes which help them to materialise products and services in a desirable, viable and feasible way. The entrepreneurial ecosystem has also embraced the design led innovation approach in recent years, and designers are at the front of this paradigm shift.  This doctoral research studies designers´ transitions when they start a company, and how they experience being designers while also becoming entrepreneurs in consumer products start-ups.

Valencia, A., Lievesley, M., Young, B., Exploring the role of design-as-strategy in consumer product start-ups, dmi: Academic Design Management Conference, London, U.K. In English.