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This book is an excellent demonstration of the principles of high-involvement innovation—quite simply, without the help of a great many people it would not have been possible to produce it! I am grateful to many friends and colleagues for their help and encouragement and would like to take this opportunity to say a large ‘thank you’ to all of them.

In particular I would like to mention the various members of the CIRCA team at the University of Brighton—Steve Webb, John Gilbert, Jane Burnell, Sarah Caffyn, Maeve Gallagher, Sarah Austin, Jeff Readman, Michael Vaag and, of course, Pauline Nissen, who held the whole project together, ran the Network and was always around to ensure that the project stayed on a continuously improving trajectory. In the same vein, I owe a debt to the many members of the CIRCA and CENTRIM networks who shared the company perspective on high-involvement innovation and who taught me a great deal about how the problems of implementation emerge and are handled in practice.

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Few UK businesses can develop and grow sustainably by making and selling commodity products. Some rail against this – but it is a reality. And excitingly it’s a reality that often leads to greater success for businesses that embrace it by offering added value products and services. Design is a key factor in adding that value and differentiating businesses from local, national and international competition. Design Council research (National Survey, 2002) demonstrates a clear link between the way a company understands and uses design and its business performance. For example, 91 per cent of rapidly growing companies use design, compared with 49 per cent of businesses overall. Introducing new products or services is crucial to business growth. So it is not surprising that 83 per cent of growing UK businesses have done just that in the past three years. Perhaps the surprise is that some companies are not even trying. The evidence is that only 17 per cent of companies that had stayed the same size had introduced anything new. You cannot help wondering how long they will be in business. This book breaks down innovation into three parts: Inspire, Create, Connect. This reflects the Design Council and DTI Living Innovation project, which analysed the processes used by a number of the Design Council’s Millennium Product companies. At its crudest, innovation is simply about doing something new. What design brings to the party is an ability to connect bright ideas to real customer needs: producing great products and services that delight customers. Growing companies recognise a clear connection between design and sales: 75 per cent of them say that design played a part in their sales growth. Sadly, most companies that hadn’t grown also could not see a role for design in increasing their sales.

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In an increasingly competitive world, it is quality of thinking that gives an edge—an idea that opens new doors, a technique that solves a problem, or an insight that simply helps make sense of it all. We work with leading authors in the various arenas of business and finance to bring cutting-edge thinking and best learning practice to a global market. It is our goal to create world-class print publications and electronic products that give readers knowledge and understanding which can then be applied, whether studying or at work.