Nowadays, consumers are paying increasing attention towards the socio-cultural aspects of products. For this reason firms must consider the need for linguistic and semantic innovations as well as technological and functional innovations. Historically, the knowledge needed for each kind of...

Today, more than ever, products determine their own market presence through the meanings that they assume and the symbolic value that they exude. For this reason, an increasing number of companies are trying to enrich brands and products with new cultural values and messages. The cultural...

Since the beginning of the 1990s, innovation management literature has attempted to overcome some oversimplified dichotomies coming from well-established theories (e.g., open vs. closed, external vs. internal, cooperation vs. competition, knowledge vs. learning). The design-push approach to the...

In the ‘knowledge economy’, knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) are a key driver for innovation and competitiveness. The internationalization of these businesses raises challenges given their specificities such as knowledge intensity, the importance of customer interaction and...

Purpose – The increasing importance that customers give to the aesthetic, symbolic and emotional value of products leads companies to approach the product design as a means to create a competitive advantage. Considering that competing through design involves the development of new product...

Purpose – The main objective of this article is to propose an interpretive model that attempts to decipher a product's values in terms of functionality, usability and meaning. This model can support companies in better integrating these values in their product offering and in defining the most...

Purpose – Nowadays, the strategic role of design is reinforced by the increased attention that customers pay to the aesthetic, symbolic and emotional values of products. These values can be communicated through the appropriate combination of product signs (such as form, colours, materials and...

Purpose – Product functionalities aim to satisfy the operative needs of the customer, while product meanings (i.e. the emotion and the symbolic values represented by the product) aim to satisfy the emotional and socio‐cultural needs of the customer. What consumers are increasingly looking...