Design innovation approaches have received significant attention and application in both management research and practice. However, questions remain about the decision-making processes and behaviors associated with desirable design innovation outcomes, a critical knowledge base for effective management of design innovation methods in organizations. This talk briefly describes three complementary studies exploring the decision-making strategies, narrative tools, and mental models that innovators leverage while applying design innovation methods. First, decision-making strategies used by human-centered design teams to select methodologies are discussed. Examining student design teams over the course of an entire project, this work presents characteristic patterns in decision-making that emerge across phases of the design innovation process and offers multiple opportunities to better support innovation team decision-making. Second, an examination of how student innovators leverage narrative and storytelling throughout the human-centered design process is presented. Results highlight the relative presence and absence of narrative throughout the design process, pointing to opportunities to support innovation teams’ communication. Third, a study of how engineers and designers engage with artificial intelligence-enabled tools, and the mental models they develop to understand such tools, is presented, and the implications for automation in innovation are discussed. Last, drawing on a current study examining the convergence of data science and design thinking practices in organizations, this talk concludes with a vision for how design innovation can be supported and facilitated in the individual, team, and organizational practice.
Vivek Rao is a lecturer at Berkeley Haas's Mechanical Engineering department and a lecturer at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. In addition, he is currently a visiting scholar at the Department of Management Engineering, University of Bologna. His research and teaching focus on the fields of engineering design theory and methodology, innovation management, and their use in the context of emerging technologies and sociotechnical systems. He earned a BS, MS, and Ph.D., all in mechanical engineering, from UC Berkeley. Prior to returning to academia, he was a designer and strategist at the global innovation consultancy IDEO, working with clients from sectors ranging from pharmaceuticals to furniture.
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