The main aim of the 'Design in Tech Start-ups' project is to investigate the positive impacts produced by the adoption of design within the creation processes of new companies, particularly tech-driven start-ups. The positive value generated by design on companies and their business models is increasingly discussed and recognised in the literature. However, it is still unclear what impact design processes have on new business ideas, driven by technological change.
• Design in Organizations
• Strategic Design
• Design Thinking
The investigation straddles the worlds of design and management, exploring the possible positive impacts generated by the collaboration of these two disciplines. Since the late 1990s, the topic of entrepreneurship has been one that has attracted the most interest from managers, politicians and economists. This field has rarely considered the role of design as a strategic lever to create competitive advantage. Since about ten years ago, some scholars have begun to emphasise how design can lead to the development of new ideas that represent innovative forms of entrepreneurship. The aim is of identifying commonalities between these two worlds, hitherto often hidden.
The project understands the relationship between design and entrepreneurship, within the business creation process, already addressed in the literature; it was developed a conceptual framework that considers the intervention of design with respect to the various life cycles of start-ups. This was possible thanks the analysis of a series of cases of entrepreneurial realities, driven by technological development, in order to concretely understand whether there has been an implicit presence of design processes and what impact, if any, it has produced.
