Innovativeness and creativity are in our blood, but as we grow up, we get caught in repetitive patterns, almost rigid mind frames and thinking processes. This is particularly challenging for organisations which rely heavily on the innovativeness of their products or services in order to gain competitive advantage. However, most of them still follow traditional product design and development processes, which are preliminary focused on reducing risk and rushing through conceptual and preliminary design stages.

This paper presents the development of a new framework for conceptual and preliminary design phases, based on two of the world-leading improvement approaches: Set-Based Concurrent Engineering (SBCE) and Design Thinking. The new Set-Based Innovation Framework developed by Lean Analytics Association (LAA) integrates the set development, learning and delaying decision from SBCE, which contributes to increased innovation, reduced risk of radically different solutions, increased learning in organisation and allows exploration of a design space envelope. However, a human or end customer focus and extensive (but sensible) prototyping is drawn from Design Thinking approach, in order to ensure that the decisions made throughout the design and development process are based on evidence and knowledge created, and that the end customer is put at the heart of any design. Authors believe this framework comprehensively represents an effective and efficient product design and development process which could be applicable to most of the industrial sectors, and can enhance an organisation’s capability to innovate, reduce the overall development time and essentially move from being financially profit driven to becoming customer oriented.

Introduction

Ever since humans evolved from Hominidae[1], we have been developers and creators. From stone tools, fire, language and farming to modern industry as we know it today, we have changed our surroundings with a purpose to improve our life. In other words, we have been evolving through our instincts, through our pursuit of a better life, and we have never stopped. If anything, the rate of change today is significantly faster than ever before. As the stone tools made everyday jobs considerably easier and faster for Homo erectus (one of the earliest members of the genus Homo), so does the technology, communication, services and other inventions of today. Regardless of how much faster and cheaper the new products are introduced, used and disposed of today, there is still a need to make processes more efficient, more effective and more innovation focused.

Today’s global market is the fastest and the most demanding market humans have ever lived in, and this is having a huge effect on both the industry and the consumers. Consumers have evolved to the stage where, as the author of the Design thinking for strategic innovation book, Idris Mootee wrote, “We want more, when we want it, how we want it, and at the price we want,” and this is having an immense effect on the traditional type of business where financial profit is the driving force of an organisation.

More and more organisations, both SMEs and global corporations, are realising that having implemented the lean manufacturing, six sigma, total quality management, and other improvement approaches to eliminate unwanted surprises is not enough anymore. That a shift in their management and development paradigm is needed, if they are to stay present on the market and retain their competitive advantage.

In this paper, authors describe an improvement framework which has the capability to transform a traditional development process into a leaner, more efficient, more fluent and more customer and innovation focused process. It was developed on the foundations of the two of most influential approaches of modern time; Set-Based Concurrent Engineering (SBCE) and Design Thinking (DT). The following sections of this paper describe the theoretical foundations, development methodology and the framework itself. The paper concludes with conclusions and recommendations for future work.