Design to market thinking: exploring the merits of strategic niche management in design thinking

Sustainability transitions require that sustainable innovations develop and scale-up. Two promising approaches contribute to this purpose. Design thinking (DT) focuses on the creative development of sustainable innovations to achieve desirable, feasible and viable products. Strategic niche managemen...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Technology analysis & strategic management 2023-06, Vol.35 (6), p.767-784
Main Authors: Schraven, D.F.J., Arghandeh Jouneghani, P., Jonkers, H.M., Hertogh, M.J.C.M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Coins
Design thinking
innovation
Innovations
market
strategic niche management
Sustainability
Teams
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Summary:Sustainability transitions require that sustainable innovations develop and scale-up. Two promising approaches contribute to this purpose. Design thinking (DT) focuses on the creative development of sustainable innovations to achieve desirable, feasible and viable products. Strategic niche management (SNM) addresses how sustainable innovations should be deployed to the market. At first sight, these concepts seem to pursue a complementary mission, yet, academic literature has not explicitly addressed their complementary nature. Therefore, this paper addresses this gap by reviewing, proposing and empirically exploring the merits of SNM and how these can be used in DT through a workshop to increase successful market implementation of sustainable innovations. The study finds that SNM potentially helps the DT design process to (1) change market preconditions for the design, (2) create a protected niche for development, (3) establish a (long term) commercial viability, and (4) create an innovation development plan through definition of a set of testable propositions. The paper concludes that the inclusion of SNM into DT substantially increases the preparedness of an innovation team for a successful market implementation of sustainable innovations and coins the term 'Design to Market Thinking' for the integrated use of SNM in DT.
ISSN:0953-7325
1465-3990
DOI:10.1080/09537325.2021.1986211