Drawing a Better Bank
PengeWorkshoppen (the MoneyWorkshop) seeks to equip bank customers to reclaim responsibility for their personal economy. The workshop is a method that Kirsten Bonde Sørensen developed as part of her Industrial Ph.D. project for the savings bank Middelfart Sparekasse and the Kolding School of Design, Denmark. She defended her Ph.D. dissertation on 4 November 2011.
13 December 2011

Using a Ph.D. Degree
A Ph.D. degree is a natural and necessary step in a research career. But what about the Ph.D.s who opt for a career in business? In this article, we meet three of them. The Ph.D. title is not per se essential in their current positions, but they do apply research knowledge and methods in their work.
15 November 2011

Renewed Innovation Power in the LEGO Group
A shared language that enables a strategic dialogue about innovation across the entire LEGO Group. Clear goals and thus a clear sense of direction for innovative initiatives. Clarification of competence needs in relation to project planning. These are some of the benefits that the LEGO Group is now reaping after recently completing a four-year design-based project that came to be called Design for Business.
15 March 2011

Design Research Strengthens ­Innovation at Deutsche Telekom
At Deutsche Telekom Laboratories in Berlin, design research is an integrated part of the development activities. It is anchored in the Design Research Lab, which under Professor Dr. Gesche Joost’s leadership offers new input to innovation in the company. Among other achievements, design research helped speed up the development process in the design of a new telephone, and it helps secure the future innovation at Deutsche Telekom.
20 April 2010

Designers as Interpreters in Co-Creation Processes
Co-creation – creating value together with the users – will become a key driver of innovation in the future. In co-creation processes, design is essential because designers act as interpreters in the process, says Eskild Hansen, head of Cisco Consumer Products’ European Design Center and a member of the board for the Danish Design Council. This developments places new demands on designers’ competences, and it is crucial to integrate research, education and business if we are to realise the innovation potential inherent in design, says Jørgen Rasmussen, associate professor and head of the Department of Design at the Aarhus School of Architecture.
20 April 2010

Consortiums Open Doors
Four consortiums in the fields of textile, fashion, furniture and strategic design form the setting for a collaboration of design researchers, research institutions and companies. The consortiums generate synergy and valuable networks and promote the exchange of knowledge and ideas with the business sector. For example, the Textile Consortium has opened new doors for Vibeke Riisberg, associate professor at Designskolen Kolding. She sees the consortium setup as a helpful framework for the exchange of knowledge and the communication of Danish and international textile research to industry, designers and the educational institutions. A common feature for all four consortiums is that they are helping to upgrade their field and generate innovation.
17 February 2010

Like Being Inside a Kaleidoscope
The value of combining practice-based insights from industry with the theoretical insights from the research environment is apparent in textile designer Anne Louise Bangs Industrial Ph.D. project. As an Industrial Ph.D. scholar at the textile company Gabriel and with her ties to Designskolen Kolding she is enjoying the best of both worlds. With user-driven innovation as the key focus, in her research project she attempts to add new tools to the design process.
20 October 2008

Innovation in Waste Management
Design researchers from The Danish Design School are developing methods to strengthen innovation in complex projects. The goal is to design a model for an open, inter-disciplinary innovation process, where researchers working with designers, users and representatives of companies generate analyses and future scenarios. In the research project 'Design-Anthropological Innovation Model', the researchers have taken on the area of waste management as a pilot project for the development of new methods.
17 November 2008

The Interaction of Research and Business
A mobile lifestyle with extensive travel or several homes is becoming increasingly common. Aviaja Borup, who is an Industrial Ph.D. scholar at Bang & Olufsen, studies how the design of products and services might help create a sense of domesticity for people who lead a mobile and global lifestyle. The project is carried out in cooperation with the Aarhus School of Architecture and offers valuable insights for both the research environment and the company.
15 December 2008

A Tin-Opener for Collaboration Between Industry and Research
Most consumers have experienced occasional problems with opening packaging. Now, design researchers working with the Danish Technological Institute, the packaging industry and the Danish Rheumatism Association aim to create a platform for developing more user-friendly packaging. One intended outcome of the project is a guideline that industry can use in development efforts. The project also points the way for more extended collaboration between companies and design researchers.
15 May 2008

Society Benefits from the Commercialisation of Research
New knowledge from research should be used to benefit business and society. That is the idea behind Aalborg University’s initiative to match researchers and their good ideas with companies that are able to exploit the ideas commercially and thus create new jobs.
15 May 2009

Crisis May Force Companies to Develop
Overall, crises generate growth because they force companies to develop, says Tore Kristensen, professor of strategic design at the Copenhagen Business School. He points out that design research may facilitate the development efforts that some companies initiate in response to the crisis in order to optimise their products and processes and, not least, to get to the core of the company’s strategy and effort. A survey from the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation shows that one in seven companies expects to increase its development efforts despite the current crisis, although the total volume of Danish companies’ research and development activities is expected to decline in 2009 in response to the crisis.
20 October 2009

The Designer as Trickster
In her anthropological research project on designer roles, anthropologist and management researcher Karen Lisa Salamon looks at the designer’s role as a trickster. With their unconventional approach to the design process, tricksters provide the change and renewal that are so crucial to our society, says Karen Lisa Salamon. The Danish newspaper Politiken’s editor of design, Søren Nyeland, says that Karen Lisa Salamon’s research adds a new perspective to designers’ perception of their own role. He and the other designers at Politiken often act as tricksters in the creative process.
15 December 2009

Using Creativity to Enhance Consumer Awareness
With the aid of two Ph.D. projects, the Danish savings bank Middelfart Sparekasse has undergone an organisational development process focused on human values and staff self-management. Now, the bank’s third Industrial Ph.D. scholar, Kirsten Bonde Sørensen from Kolding School of Design, wants to introduce self-management and the exploration of values to the field of customer relations. The goal is to develop a new type of consumer communication to help individual customers clarify their values through creativity and reflection.
19 January 2010