Design, creativity and innovation in business network of Made in Italy

This article aims to contribute at the flourishing debate on innovation networks and focuses the attention on the interaction work among designer, enterprises and handicraft suppliers. The central argument is that product innovation, within manufactory networks, is emergent from the relation among knots of the same network. Innovation takes shape in craftsmen’s practices and is embedded in collaboration practices among firms, designers and craftsmen suppliers. It is in these collaboration practices that new material articulations emerge and the new object takes the final configuration. The new object articulation is a recursive process made by experimentation and exploration that involve practical manipulations, reflexive thought (Sennett, 2008; Yaneva, 2004) and aesthetical judgment (Strati, 1999; Parolin, 2010). This process implies: an active involvement on the "object of work"; the use of the "project" as "thing" (Brown 2001; 2005); the use of artefacts that compose the "project" as reference to evaluate new solutions; the circulation of temporary objects and the face-to-face interactions among actors of the network.

Laura Lucia Parolin, L’innovazione nelle relazioni tra i nodi di un network. Il caso dei fornitori artigiani nell’industria del mobile in "STUDI ORGANIZZATIVI " 2/2010, pp 55-74, DOI: 10.3280/SO2010-002003