Intensive Innovation Context and Design System Dynamics. The Case of Car Information Communication Entertainment (ICE) Systems

Recent literature on innovation strategy and organizational change has challenged the classical punctuated equilibrium pattern that alternates long periods of stability with short bursts of radical change in the dominant design of products. Research into high-tech sectors such as the computer industry and into the mass-production sector has addressed the issue of repeated radical innovation trajectories and proposed theoretical patterns for «neo-industrial organizations» , «intensive innovation-based strategies,» and «design-oriented organizations» ). This chapter analyzes such ever-changing contexts. We try to demonstrate that such innovation trajectories cannot be analyzed as merely a succession of product projects, but rather must be tightly connected to deep transformations in the «permanent» organization where they are found.