The Power of Design: Product Innovation in Sustainable Energy Technologies

2.3 Delft Innovation Model in Use

Jan Buijs

Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Department of Product Innovation Management, Landbergstraat 15, The Netherlands

2.3.1 Introduction

In the use of products and services, the need for new products and services will develop; namely, by using the product, users get good or bad usage experiences. In the case of good usage experiences, they will be loyal to the product and the company or brand that is offering the product; with bad usage experiences, they will look around for better product offerings and maybe change over to other products or brands. However, if a company notices that some of its clients have switched over to the products of innovating competitors, they will probably react by offering better or cheaper products, enabling their former users to switch back to the new offering.

To capture the product innovation process, we developed the Delft innovation model (DIM) for educating designers and engineers (Buijs and Valkenburg, 2005; see Figure 2.3.1). For the history and background of the development of this model, we refer to Buijs (2003). This model of the innovation process is one of the elements of the Delft innovation method. For more details about the overall method, we refer to Buijs (2012). In the circular representation of the Delft innovation model in Figure 2.3.1, it can be seen that the product innovation process bites itself in the tail. It shows the five stages (starting from ...