Mastering technologies in design-driven innovations: how two Italian furniture companies make design a central part of their innovation process

Design is more and more viewed as an important strategic resource. However, even though there is a lot of talk about design, there are only a handful of companies that have truly mastered the design-driven approach to innovation. There is even less research that has tried to understand how these companies are able to successfully manage this approach. This paper aims to understand what it means to make design a central part of the business process, something able to add value to products and create new markets. More specifically, it focuses on the interplay between functional and semantic dimensions of a product. In-depth case studies about two leading Italian companies that operate in the furniture industry (Kartell and Luceplan) underline different interpretations of the role of technologies in radical innovations in product meanings. The empirical results highlight two main interpretations of the role of technologies in radical design-driven innovations: technologies as enablers of new product meanings, the importance of a supply network that allows to rapidly change product technologies and supports the experimentation of new ones.