The shaping of dissonance in craft-based innovation

Abstract

Novelty and value are two key features of any type of innovation and have consequently received much emphasis in design and innovation studies. Lately, the predominant unilateral emphasis on novelty has been questioned in an emerging literature stream focusing on the role of tradition in innovation, and recent research has shown that a potential way of creating value is to use a combination of novel and traditional components, resulting in what is suggested as design innovation dissonance. Drawing on research through design, this paper develops the writing of production novellas from the design of three different design innovation processes, the deliberate use of tensions between novelty and tradition in material, form, manufacturing process, context, and history is described and analysed, in order to unveil explicit steps of the design process.