The spread of product development methodology: Exploring drivers and barriers in Swedish Industry

Paper in proceeding, 2014

The outcome of Design, Innovation and Product development research is often manifested as recommendations in the form of methods, but these do not always find their way into industrial application. This paper elaborates on drivers and barriers for the spread of product development methodology based on 41 interviews with managers, designers, developers and knowledge brokers. Results indicate a range of motives for adopting methods including e.g. coordination of different actors, generation of documentation, methods serving as tools for various design tasks etc. However; the value of tools must be seen in relation to local conditions and practices. The spread of methods occurs between and within organisations and may be actively supported while ideally “good tools spread themselves”. Participants call for methods to be scalable or malleable, guiding, informing and enabling without constraining or enforcing too rigid procedures.