Design Research and Sense-making In Culture Intensive Industries: Driving Innovation Through a Design Reading of Cultural Evolutions

Design, as discipline and practice, is referred to as the interpretation of contemporary culture, both in its tangible and intangible expressions. The design practice acts as an agent that can detect cultural evolutions, identify their drivers and patterns of change, and then design a possible new cultural environment, which can embed the newly-found meanings and drive the innovation of products and services. Through a literature review, the paper introduces the notions of ‘contemporary cultures’ and ‘culture intensive goods’, investigating the paradigmatic shift from technology- and market-driven innovation to design- and culture-driven innovation. Within this theoretical framework, the paper will focus on fashion, one of the most advanced culture intensive industries, as a peculiar case which has built methodologies and tools to draw innovation trajectories, starting from the reading of socio-cultural and economical contexts. In particular, the paper will discuss how cultural contents are embedded into fashion artefacts, how cultural exchange is becoming part of the relationship between contemporary users and producers and how fashion has become an eminent provider of cultural diversity and authenticity in contemporary markets.