Design as a creative way of framing and solving problems is considered an essential business capability in an innovation era. Organizations with design capability can improve the lives of their customers, stakeholders and employees by creating valuable products, services and experiences. Design-led innovation is a framework that assists organizations to develop design capability for creating a better future as well as profitability. However, implementing design-led innovation requires support. This article presents insights from an action research extended to design innovation catalyst. The catalyst’s aim was to facilitate implementation of design-led innovation in an Australian Airport Corporation to develop design capability. To date, this extended role of action researcher as design innovation catalyst has received limited attention. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to present insights from the experience of the action researcher as a design innovation catalyst. This paper contributes conceptual and practical insight into the research design, action research cycles and critical reflection of an action researcher operating as design innovation catalyst.

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The design-led innovation framework enables organizations to systematically develop the design capabilities they need to pursue their innovation objectives. When a design researcher works in tandem with organizational stakeholders to implement the framework, the dynamic they create is complex. This article relates our efforts to apply narratives as a tool to effectively drive this process forward, given their demonstrated ability to sustain organizational innovation and frame new possibilities. During an eighteen-month action research project, we implemented the design-led innovation framework inside an Australian Airport Corporation. Our research revealed that three narrative techniques—low-fidelity narratives, realistic narratives, and strategy narratives—particularly supported several key stages of this creative innovation process. Narratives enabled us to surface internally-held assumptions and beliefs and test their validity with external customers and stakeholders; they established common ground among various stakeholders during the innovation process; they served to convince managers to pursue design-led innovation outputs; and they facilitated the co-creation and implementation of a company-wide strategy. This article contributes new knowledge and practical guidance for developing and applying narrative techniques during design-led innovation.@en

Design-led innovation (DLI) is a framework with particular focus on developing design capability. Implementation of DLI has been observed to positively influence firm innovation performance. As the framework is of relative infancy, there is opportunity to learn from and integrate methods and practice from other fields to strengthen the implementation of DLI. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to make explicit, the similarities DLI shares with sensemaking as in order to provider clearer approaches to managing the design process. An action research design is applied for 14 months within a major Australian Airport Corporation (AAC) to implement DLI. Qualitative data is collected and analysed, with the findings showing there are implicit similarities between the practice of DLI and mandates of sensemaking. The paper contributes opportunities to strengthen DLI by incorporating mandates of sensemaking consciously to enrich interpersonal interactions during the design process.@en

There is an increasing need for organizations to adapt to rapid changes in society. This need requires organizations’ and the leader within them, to explore, recognize, build and exploit new capabilities. Researching such capabilities has drawn attention from the design management research community in recent years. Dominantly, research contributions have focused on perspectives of innovation and the strategic application of design with the researcher distanced from context. Descriptive and evaluative case studies of past organizational leadership have been vital, by building momentum for the design movement. However, there is a need now to progress toward prescriptive and explorative research perspectives that embrace context through practice and the simultaneous research of design. Therefore, the aim of this track is to lead and progress discussion on research methodologies that support the research community in developing explorative and prescriptive research methodologies for context-orientated organizational research. This track brings together a group of diverse international researchers and practitioners to fuel discussion on design approaches and subsequent outcomes of prescriptive and explorative research methodologies. @en