Interdisciplinary Design Approach Led Multicultural Perspective Teaching Practice (original) (raw)

The 18th academic conference hosted by the Design Management Institute (DMI) of Boston, Mass., attracted a greater number of papers than any previous conference. The event was intended to highlight the importance of the contribution of design to organisational effectiveness and success, particularly in the ways that it can improve the new product development process, contribute to better strategic thinking and decision-making, and be an important element in the leader¡¦s toolkit. The conference was a means for researchers and thinkers to celebrate the importance of design and to work towards becoming a credible and full participant in the work of organisations. We were proud and deeply honoured to have Professor Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Business at the University of Toronto, as our keynote speaker. He has been an inspirational thinker and one of the foremost and most passionate advocates of the methodologies and thinking of design as important and under-utilised organisational resources. Our goal was to create an inclusive conversation among academics from a variety of disciplines, including business (organizational behavior, strategy, marketing, and operations) and design management (design strategy, product design, brand identity, communications, interactive design, user experience, architecture, and environmental design). We aimed to advance the state of the art in design management research, theory, and practice, and produce a significant contribution to this exciting and fast-developing field. Businesses are changing; manufacturers are becoming service providers and services are focusing increasingly on experiences. Organizations, in both the profit and the social sector, are seeking competitive advantage through innovation in their offerings, structure, processes, and business models. We believe that this was an appropriate time to convene a gathering of academics to take a critical look at how to bring a scholarly lens to the ways that design may help to both shape and implement innovation in these emerging developments. The theme of the conference, Leading Innovation through Design, clearly attracted management theorists as well as well as design theorists, as it was intended to do. The conference organisers, in locating it close both physically and in terms of time alongside the management community's main academic conference -the AOM- hoped to attract "mainstream" management researchers to contribute to the design management research conversation. The organisers believe that design management research has been undeservedly neglected by management theorists. The result was a large number of submissions of top quality, interesting, and rigorous papers. A total of 195 submissions were received from 36 countries and 133 universities and research institutes. These submissions were blind reviewed. Approximately 45% were accepted for presentation of full papers at the conference, and are published in these proceedings. The conference was organised around these seven themes, and both full paper presentations and poster sessions were organised into these tracks: - Innovations in Design Research Methodologies, Management Processes - Bridging Research and Practice in the Management of Design - Design-Led Innovation in Business Models - Developing Design Thinking Skills - Design-Led Innovation in Products and Services - Design-Led Innovation in Organizations and the Workplace - Innovations in Design Management Education We would like to thank a number of people and organisations who have been helpful in organising the conference and preparing this set of proceedings. These include John Tobin, VP, Business Operations, from Design Management Institute who provided exceptional support in his role as Conference Secretary. We would like to thank Esther Dudley from Plymouth University, who encourage her students to produce artwork proposals for the conference identity, Sarah Essex whose design proposals were adopted, and every member of the International Scientific Review Committee who provided their time and expertise during the review process. This was a truly international team effort by conference committee whose members were dispersed across the world.