Corporate Design Foundation initiated a major research project in 2003. The program, entitled Design in Business, is exploring and documenting state-of-the-art innovative product design and development at a group of non-competing companies and interviewing experts in this field.

The intention of this project is to understand and identify how design capabilities are effectively used to drive success in the current corporate environment. For this project a range of company individuals were interviewed including design managers, the executives to whom they report and representatives from development teams from different disciplines. In addition, design experts, including business school faculty and authors with expertise in product development were interviewed about their views on current best practice.

This research will document the drivers and hurdles of successful projects/products, the organization and processes of project teams, activities and responsibilities of team members, and the current challenges of corporate and design collaboration.

Summaries of the results will be provided initially to participating companies, these results will later be provided to Foundation partners.