Design e innovazione

Product design plaid an important role in international competition. The innovation concept, over time, was extended in several directions: no longer reffering only product innovation, technology tangible element-functional but also aesthetic, design, image, communications and services in an integrated way with new products. Nowadays the desing concept also presents elements of ambiguity. In a restrictive view desing concerns a strategic group of furniture industry. The design, in a broader conception, extends to all companies who employ the aesthetic dimension of the products shape to differentiate their offerings. What qualifications in consumer's evaluation system a design object? How is changing the concept in the consumer mind? What factors have the most significant designer (to become star) or the brand that does qualify as a breeder of designer? In marketing literature the relationship innovation/design has not yet been analysed and this work seeks to contribute in this area. Lack knowledge is particularly serious in Italy, for the importance in our country, especially in the post-war history of industrial development (for example, we consider the most significant, Olivetti and Piaggio). In design many Italian companies have reached a global leadership. The work aims to frame the design and place it in the right interrelation with the innovation concept in view of stimuli arising from 'Oslo Manual OECD-Eurostat (2005), which suggests a re-definition of the concept of marketing innovation, which has not found till now a place in literature. The research, supervised and having redefined the design concept, is based on the results of a survey carried out by focus groups, aims to deepen the limits of traditional models of interpretation of the innovation process in the marketing literature, than the reading skills of the innovation process in sectors with strong aesthetic component. The methodology research includes the study of cases of selected companies looking for their performance in design. The collection of information will be made through three funds: documentation, archival records and interviews, in particular will be specific reference to the methodology proposed by Yin among the first R. K. 1994, Case study research: desing and Methods, Sage Publication, Tousand Oacks, CA. The results of cases study research help to clarify the innovation process of Italian design firms.