Impact of design management on innovation

Abstract

Design management is complementary to innovation-managing design processes as well as designing management processes. While innovation has been widely used in business and management, design management has been associated with product development and design process orientation. This paper questions the application, success rate, and calculation of the impact of design management on innovation, then deep-dives into their relationship. A meta-synthesis approach has been taken to identify relevant papers across six journals from business and design to conduct qualitative research from 1970–2021. As a result, four research gaps were identified for a pilot study in the future. An attempt to bridge innovation and design management in an organization with the help of a common framework is conducted. This paper would like to contribute to the fields of design and business, where the evaluation of their connection is sustainable and beneficial to the economy and society.