Technological Change: Educating for Extreme Collaboration

Abstract

This paper considers pedagogical strategies and techniques in design for attaining sustained innovation collaboratively, in order to assist in the New Product Design process and enhance opportunities for creating truly innovative products. The authors argue that the New Product Design process demands a multidisciplinary collaborative approach in order for designers to be able to have a pro-active capacity for innovation. The central theme of this paper relates to evidence for the hypothesis that it is the design teams who should act as change agents, and that one catalyst for this is an Extreme Collaborative Working model. This requires a further re-evaluation of the benefits of teaching and working across the different disciplines of Industrial design, Design Engineering and areas outside these domains. To cope with operating in an increasing technologically turbulent context, future teaching programs need to make creative connections between diverse design issues and diverse resources.