Editorial

Abstract

Creativity alone does not necessarily imply good Design, and apparently-well-designed products may not result in Innovation. This consideration alone constitutes a good reason for sharing a space to discuss how creativity, design and innovation interact. The International Journal of Design Creativity and Innovation (IJDCI) represents a unique scientific resource where such discussion can take place: after 5 years and 20 issues, IJDCI is entering its maturity stage being now indexed by two major scientific databases, thus increasing its visibility and offering to young researchers and expert scholars from different fields the opportunity to present their research outcomes and share new challenges they intend to face. Without any ambition to formally define ‘Innovation,’ a topic debated too much already, we would like to stress the importance of considering two essential dimensions of innovation: novelty and adoption. Clearly, any innovation requires some degree of novelty. However, there is no real innovation if that novelty is not adopted by some target community. Both dimensions offer many opportunities for studying the role that design creativity can play in promoting innovation. How to creatively explore new needs to satisfy? How to designerly identify new ways to face emerging social challenges? How to recognize and even anticipate value changes that could open innovation opportunities? These are just exemplary questions that might expand the discussion on design creativity when dealing with innovation and its multiple perspectives. At the same time, even more space for research emerges when referring to adoption issues. Can design creativity help identify new target communities at whom aim innovation? What actors have a stake in the adoption process? What factors affect the adoption process? It is important to notice that these issues do not necessarily refer to purchase decision mechanisms, but to any process that brings a certain community to accept a new solution in order to fulfill their expectations or to satisfy their exigencies. We hope these and more questions will be addressed by IJDCI authors with contributions capable of enriching the collective knowledge on design creativity and its role in the production of sustainable innovation of real value for society. This will require both qualitative and quantitative studies, characterized by scientific rigor and intellectual honesty. We certainly need models suitable for representing all stages, activities and objects of innovation processes, so as to increase our capacity to connect human needs and values with utility and functionality of artefacts and to elicit all related transformations. At the same time, we recognize the grounding value of the old quote ‘If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Improve It.’ Therefore, we welcome original contributions with proposals of comparison means to measure and analyse successful innovations and failures and the processes that characterize them from the perspective of all relevant actors. Both, models and quantitative comparison means, should foster the analysis of practitioners’ practices in order to identify regular patterns and conditions, and to test and validate new approaches, methods and tools that enhance design creativity. In fact, these represent a consolidated set of topics that has characterized IJDCI papers since its first volume. Overall, the International Journal of Design Creativity and Innovation confirms its vocation to be the melting pot of competencies from different domains such as systems engineering, information technology, computer science, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, psychology, philosophy, linguistics, management, and other related fields.