Journal of Engineering Design

Vol. 16, No. 4, August 2005, 413–421

Design, product development, innovation: all the same in

the end? A short discussion on terminology
CHRISTIAN MARXT*† and FREDRIK HACKLIN†
†Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Switzerland

The spectrum of terminology to describe the professional and academic field “design” is manifold.
Terms like design, engineering design, product development, and innovation are widely accepted
and used. Whereas some of these terms are common in the business area, others are rather used in
the engineering field. Based on the terminologies from exponents of the design science as well as
other communities, the paper tries to broaden the view on what “design” means. Additionally, the
paper highlights the accordance and differences between the terms design, product development and
innovation, and attempts to derive implications for organising research practice in such a broader
context. The paper should be seen as starting point for a wider discussion.

Keywords: Design research and methodology; Design; Product development; Innovation;

Terminology; Convergence; Multidisciplinary; Interdisciplinary

1. Introduction

It is widely accepted in academia and industry that new products or services, which are
developed on a regular basis, are one of the main factors for sustainable success of companies.
Although the fact itself is clear, the terminology used to describe this professional and aca-
demic field is manifold. Terms such as design, engineering design, product development, and
innovation are used in overlapping contexts, seeming to be redundant in their significance in
certain contexts. Some of these terms are rather common in the business area, whereas others
originate from the engineering field.
Simultaneously, recent industry developments show a trend towards shorter innovation
processes, emerging customer integration into product development, as well as increasing
degrees of multidisciplinarity in the design of new products (Thomke and von Hippel 2002,
Engwall et al. 2003, O’Connor et al. 2003, Agogino et al. 2004, Lojacono and Zaccai 2004).
Based on these observations, the question arises of whether the increasingly blurred semantics
between the aforementioned terms actually occur by chance, or whether this reflects the
evolution of the community.

*Corresponding author. Email: christian.marxt@ethz.ch

Best Young Design Researcher paper at the Design 2004 Society Conference in Dubrovnik, as judged by a panel
in which Professors Marjanović, Birkhofer and Andreasen were included.

Journal of Engineering Design

ISSN 0954-4828 print/ISSN 1466-1837 online © 2005 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/09544820500131169
414 C. Marxt and F. Hacklin

Table 1. Overview of etymological backgrounds of terminology.

Design 1548, from L. designare ‘mark out, devise’, from de- ‘out’ + signare ‘to mark’, from
signum ‘a mark, sign’. Originally in English with the meaning now attached to
designate (1646, from L. designatus, pp. of designare); many modern uses of design
are metaphoric extensions. Designer (adj.) in the fashion sense of ‘prestigious’ is
first recorded 1966; designer drug is from 1983. Designing ‘scheming’ is from 1671.
Designated hitter introduced in American League baseball in 1973, soon giving
wide figurative extension to designated
Innovate 1548, from L. innovatus, pp. of innovare ‘to renew or change’, from in- ‘into’ + novus
‘new’
Develop 1656, ‘unroll, unfold’, from Fr. developper, replacing English disvelop (1592, from
M.Fr. desveloper), both from O.Fr. desveloper, from des- ‘undo’ + veloper ‘wrap
up’, of uncertain origin, possibly Celt. or Gmc. Modern figurative use is 18c. The
photographic sense is from 1845; the real estate sense is from 1890. Development
first attested 1756
Product c.1430, ‘mathematical quantity obtained by multiplication’, from M.L. productum,
from L. ‘something produced’, noun use of neuter pp. of producere ‘bring forth’
(see produce). General sense of ‘anything produced’ is attested in Eng. from 1575

Source: http://www.etymonline.com (accessed 15 September 2004).

The idea for this paper arises from an intensive discussion on the difference in terminol-
ogy during the special interest group workshop on ‘collaborative innovation’ at ICED03 in
Stockholm. Based on the different terminologies from some exponents of design science as
well as other communities, the paper tries to broaden the view of what ‘design’ means and
illustrate some different perceptions of the term between languages (e.g. German and English).
Furthermore, it is attempted to highlight the accordance and differences between the terms
design, product development and innovation. Nonetheless, this contribution should not be seen
as the definite answer to the question proposed in the title, but rather as a starting point for a
discussion.

2. Examining the terminology background

2.1 Design, engineering design, ‘Konstruieren’

The Cambridge International Dictionary defines the term ‘design’ as: ‘To make or draw plans
for something’ or ‘A design is a plan’, and ‘designing’ as ‘The art of making plans or drawings
for something’ (Dictionary 1995). Taking this meaning, it seems quite obvious that the starting
point of the development of the terminology was engineering; in its earlier stages related to
buildings, later in history to machines. The people working in the area were confronted with
the fact that design was also used for describing the discipline dealing with the shape, colour
and material of objects. The German language today still attributes this latter meaning to
the word ‘design’. Hence the term engineering design evolved to allow a clearer distinction
between these two areas. In German-speaking countries the term used was ‘Konstruieren’,
which corresponds quite well with the English term ‘engineering design’. The research in the
area, especially by Pahl and Beitz (for example, Pahl and Beitz 1993), also led to the DIN 2221
standard, which gives ideas on how the design process should look like. It not only incorporates
a product view of design, but also tries to have an eye on issues such as competition, costs,
deadlines, regulations, and so on (Verein Deutscher Ingenieure 1993). Although DIN 2221 is
the standard on ‘the methodology on developing and designing technical systems and products’
in German-speaking countries, it does not give a very clear definition of what ‘to design’ or
‘to develop’ really mean.
 Design, product development, innovation, terminology 415

In their paper on ‘Design typology and design organisation’, Andreasen et al. (2002)
describe the following basic elements of design: formulation of the design strategy, the design
task, the way to design, the organization chosen for the task, the use of this organization as well
as the actual context and the designer’s reaction upon it. Looking at these activities, especially
the final one, it seems that there is more to design than just to drawing plans for something. In
a paper on design research, Cantemessa argued that the starting point of design was lying in
mechanical engineering, but that it has widened in past years: ‘The design of products is now
being integrated with that of systems and services’ (Cantemessa 2001). A similar observation
can be made by looking at the topics of conferences related to the Design Society. These topics
have broadened as well, especially in the direction of development of products and most of
its related fields.

2.2 Product development, ‘Produktentwicklung’

The word ‘to develop’ is defined as (a) ‘to grow or change something into a more advanced
form’ or (b) ‘to invent or to bring or come into existence’ (Dictionary 1995). This seems to
incorporate two things: something radically new and something that has been adopted from
an existing product or service.
In a book that summarizes the results from the German programme ‘Produktion 2000’
and the study ‘Neue Wege zur Produktentwicklung’ (new ways to product development),
the authors identified several success factors for product development, including customer
focus, internal integration, collaboration with manufacturing, quality issues, entrepreneurship
of product designers, team orientation, solid basic knowledge and methodology, information
technology support, collaboration and alliances (Grabowski et al. 1997). All together this
enlarges the original view associated with the term ‘product development’ as mentioned in the
dictionary.
To get a better picture on what product development covers, the Product Development and
Management Association published a rather interesting handbook. The book mainly tries to
focus on many perspectives that are associated with product development. The term product
development has more of a business approach, as it also incorporates issues like market studies,
knowledge management, collaboration and others. Nonetheless, a clear definition is missing
on what product development means (Rosenau 1996).
Robert Cooper takes an interesting point of view. In his book Product Leadership neither the
term design nor development is used; he denotes the construct as ‘new product process’ or also
‘stage gate process’ (Cooper 1999). After the phase of ideation – others would probably call
this phase invention – he suggests two phases of closer investigation of feasibility and market
opportunities. After the decision is made to proceed, the development stage starts: ‘Here, the
actual design and development of the new product takes place, along with some product testing
work . . . Full production and marketing plans are also developed in this potentially lengthy
stage’ (Cooper 1999).
In summary, it can be stated that product development represents a term for referring to
the creation of an improved or new product as well as its delivery to the market. Starting
points for this are usually a market pull (or customer need) as well as a technology push
(figure 1).
A model with simultaneous phases is usually the standard model in industry. Andreasen,
for example, proposes a model somewhat similar to the one already described and calls it
‘integrated product development’: ‘Product development consists of market research, develop-
ment, the establishment of production and sales, and ongoing production and sales’(Andreasen
416 C. Marxt and F. Hacklin

Figure 1. The product development process (adopted from Andreasen 1987).

1987). Although the latter part is usually considered to belong to operations, this view sup-
ports the basic ideas on what product development consists of. If the new product is perceived
as being radical and also leads to a change of the business model of a company, one would
probably call it an innovation.

2.3 Product innovation

Looking at the term ‘innovation’, the dictionary gives us a very simple definition: to innovate
means ‘to introduce changes and new ideas’ (Dictionary 1995). Many years ago, Schumpeter
(1987) used the term to describe what he called creative destruction, and introduced it to the
economic theory. This seems to be a very broad and not quite specific definition compared with
the previous ones. It is supported by some of the most well-known authors in the field – such
as Tushman and O’Reilly (1997), who focus on the introduction of change in organizations
from a strategic perspective; or Hauschildt, who mentions that ‘innovation is about something
new: new products, new processes, new types of contracts, new ways of distribution, marketing
slogans, a new corporate identity. Innovation is more than just a technical problem’(Hauschildt
1997). Some authors go further and define innovation by distinguishing the type of newness; for
example, Thomond and Lettice (2002) describe innovation as being a continuum ranging from
radical incrementalism – that delivers significant change to the mainstream market, which is
mostly competence-enhancing with low environmental turbulence and low market uncertainty
(which you might also call new product development) – to totally disruptive innovations – that
deliver transformational change to the mainstream market and its value attributes, which are
mostly destroying with high environmental turbulence and high market uncertainty (figure 2).
Furthermore, one can also distinguish between product innovations, process innovations,
as well as market and design innovation (Utterback and Abernathy 1975, Abernathy and
Utterback 1978); of which the latter refers to the term ‘design’ in a different context. Product
innovation focuses on delivering new products or services to a customer. It focuses on creating
an additional business for a company. Process innovation on the other hand refers to optimizing
 Design, product development, innovation, terminology 417

Figure 2. A continuum of innovation (Thomond and Lettice 2002).

processes (e.g. in manufacturing, to minimize costs or to increase quality). Market innovations

try to create new markets for new products (e.g. the market for snowboarding instead of skiing).
As a final distinction there is the design innovation. This season a skiing company Kneissl
introduced a ski with an upper side consisting of artifical gems. This could be called a design
innovation.
Looking at these manifold terms used in innovation, it seems obvious that a first step should
be made in improving the terminology.

3. Synthesizing a framework for terminology classification

Looking at the statements in the earlier sections it seems more than reasonable to argue that
there has been a change of meanings over time. Although ‘design’ originates from the ‘making
of a drawing’, it is obvious that the meaning of ‘design’ has been enriched over time. In parallel
to ‘design’, the term ‘product development’ has evolved describing the generation of products,
processes or services. In the past couple of years, the term innovation has been used in a
variety of contexts, although the original meaning refers to a more or less radical introduction
of changes. Based on aligning the terminology into a value chain or innovation process-
oriented pattern, a framework for classification in terms of historical semantic meaning, as
well as perceived overlap tendency, can be constructed. In figure 3, an attempt to illustrate the
differences and the enhancements in such a framework is made.
The basis of distinguishing the three terms ‘design’, ‘product development’ and ‘innovation’
is the question of what is changed in the first place. In ‘design’ the starting point of the
discussion was introducing change to functions and concepts, whereas in the case of ‘product
development’ the focus of attention is laid onto the product. ‘Innovation’ initially signifies the
change in business models based on new ideas for creating value, but is nowadays also broadly
used for describing change of products or even technological concepts.
418 C. Marxt and F. Hacklin

Figure 3. Preliminary distinction of terms.

A second way to distinguish the terms is by looking at the process steps included. An
example for a basic process that can be used is the Stage-Gate-Process introduced by Robert
Cooper (Cooper and Kleinschmidt 1993, Cooper 1999). This process can be extended by a
technology development part (figure 4) (Ajamian and Koen 2001, Koen et al. 2001).
In this process we can see that product design basically includes the phases of development
and validation. It is quite clear that these two phases are inherently complex themselves and
consist of many subprocesses. Product development, on the other hand, also includes the
market introduction and product review activities. Product innovation is more focused on the
process as a whole from establishing a business plan based on strategic considerations to
product development and the market introduction. Putting these arguments together it can be
said that product design is a very detailed process with a lot of specific knowledge in designing
products, whereas product innovation on a more aggregate level focuses on business aspects
of delivering a product to the market.

Figure 4. Process-oriented distinction.

 Design, product development, innovation, terminology 419

4. Implications for the research community

4.1 Research methodology

There are a couple of fields that seem to be influenced by this distinction in terminology. The
first is research methodology. Epistemological considerations show us that all three research
areas can either be based on a positivistic or phenomenological foundation. This means that
researchers have to tackle similar problems in building their research cases. It seems most
rewarding to actively examine problems using both types of epistemological foundations.
Innovation management is usually seen as a social science, whereas product design is
engineering-oriented with an affiliation to basic sciences such as physics. Product develop-
ment is influenced by both streams. The recent discussion in the community on research
methodology is a good illustration of this point. Starting off as an engineering-driven science,
design research has recently moved into the direction of social sciences, incorporating the
methodologies from all kinds of disciplines in social sciences.

4.2 Education

The task of developing new products is usually carried out in teams. These teams have members
with completely different backgrounds, such as design, marketing, product management or
finances. Therefore it seems important that each of these groups has a basic understanding of
each others’work. This has an influence on the curricula of graduate or postgraduate education.
It seems important to teach a designer basic concepts of the business side of a product, whereas
a person from innovation management should have a fair clue of what the work of a product
designer is about.
In addition to that, a common problem-solving approach seems to be necessary. In Switzer-
land, systems engineering has been the methodology most widely used in these communities.
Using a systems approach has helped to bridge the gap between different disciplines. As the
business world has become dynamic as never before during the past couple of years, it seems
to be necessary to develop a new problem-solving methodology based on complex systems
theory.

4.3 Increasingly blurred terminology as an indicator for convergence

Applying an industry-evolution based perspective to this topic, one could argue that the increas-
ingly blurred terminology does not necessarily have to be related to the unthoughtfulness of
the involved people in respective communities. Furthermore, the question arises of whether
the observed redundancy in speaking out different terms in different context does not actually
represent an evidence for ongoing changes in respective industrial environments. In other
words, the convergence of technologies, or entire industries, blurring the borders between
several, previously distinct technologies, products and solutions, also implies the convergence
of processes, the way of developing new products, designs and innovations (Mueller 1999,
Lei 2000, Engwall et al. 2003). Among these, the convergence along the value chain, which
could be referred to as vertical convergence, especially illustrates the case of earlier phases
of the innovation process being merged with latter ones. As an implication, the collaboration
within buyer–supplier relationships (i.e. vertical integration) (Olson et al. 2001, Rudberg and
Olhager 2003) surely has contributed to the development of a common language.
Illustrating examples for such vertical convergence are analyzed, for example, by Olson
et al. (2001), where the emergence of cross-functional product development teams also spans
420 C. Marxt and F. Hacklin

collaboration focus along the value chain. Hence, these ‘functional dyads’ can be observed
between R&D and marketing, R&D and operations, as well as between operations and market-
ing, depending on the current phase in the overall process (i.e. early versus late stages) (Olson
et al. 2001). For instance, in the case of core switching systems for mobile phone communi-
cation, vertical networking and a rationalization of the amount of technological development
steps before market launch can be observed (Axelson 2003, Hacklin and Marxt 2003).
Representing a similar case, the convergence between the fuzzy front-end stage and a rather
market innovation-oriented phase can be seen, for example, in lead user scenarios as presented
by Thomke and von Hippel (2002). In this context, the disciplines of design and innovation
obviously become blurred.

5. Conclusions

In his book on ‘Integrated product development’, Ehrlenspiel made an interesting introduction

with his first sentence: ‘This book is about development and design as the core function of
product development’ (Ehrlenspiel 1995). It seems quite clear what he means. The originally
very limited term ‘design’(‘Konstruktion’) has evolved into a broader meaning. A designer has
suddenly been transformed into a developer or even an innovator. Hence, this new discipline
has to take issues of market as well as business strategy into account. This view is also
supported by what the Oxford Thesaurus suggests as alternatives for the phrase ‘to design’:
‘1’) draughtsmen design the structure; plan, draw, draw plans of, sketch, outline, map out,
plot, block out, delineate, draft, depict 2) designing clothes/designing schemes in his head;
create, invent, originate, think up, conceive, fashion, fabricate, hatch, innovate; inf. dream up’
(Kirkpatrick 2000). The words in the thesaurus include nearly anything that we today associate
with the work that designers, product developers or even innovators do.
Although all three terms were used in different disciplines, it seems obvious from the few
definitions used in this paper that the disciplines have evolved and broadened. Hence, there are
two answers to the initial question entitling this paper. On the one hand, the original meaning
of the three terms was different, each of which originating from different disciplines. On the
other hand, the meaning of the terms has changed over time and it seems that they are used
in a more similar way in the past couple of years. Insights into the background as well as the
tendency of the terminology semantics renders the implication for the different communities
of design, development and innovation to be aware that the gap between them is closing within
an on-going multi-disciplinary convergence.

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