Design, innovation and competitiveness in the textile industry. Upstream design driven innovation

The Italian textile industry is facing increasingly more difficulties, as a result of the growing competition in the global market. Industrial enterprises which produce textiles for the apparel sector are by tradition labour intensive, but, but also deeply rooted into Italian production environment, renowned for the top-end intrinsic quality, but now obliged to adjust to the influx of imported textile products from the newly-developed countries, particularly those in South-East Asia, mainly from recent-developed countries in South-Eastern Asia. During the last ten years, the Italian textile industry has suffered a strong downturn in terms of the number of companies, employees and revenues; simultaneously the supply of places in higher education institutes for studies in textile majors has been drastically reduced in Italy. This doctoral research was undertaken in order to study the dynamics of textiles invention processes, in order to outline promising trajectories of relevance to the creation of new textile products. The first assumption was that customers have always paid significant attention to the aesthetic, symbolic, and emotional value of ‘Made in Italy’ hard break - apparel and design above all. The thesis proposed to move selected practices and theories, which were validated into these traditional design-led consumers’ markets such as furniture and electronics, upstream to related B2B market, such as the textile materials’ one. The literature review focused on two major fields of study: the first was the world of textiles, involving the definition of ‘textile’, ‘textile design’ and the role of ‘textile designer’, and specifically the field of research and product development in the industrial context, followed by a wider analysis of recent changes in the global textiles scenario. The second was the theories connecting Innovation, competitiveness and design - specifically, design thinking, open innovation concept design, strategic design and design-driven innovation. The Design-Driven Innovation model and tools, firstly theorized starting from ‘Made in Italy’ furniture best-practices (Verganti 2009), seemed the most challenging for inventing new textiles, due to the innovation of technology, meaning and language of products. The lack of references on textile innovation, textile product-development, textile design and textile design education was the cue to develop two empirical activities. The first was the exploration of the field through 20 preliminary interviews with key professionals from the textile academic world and the industrial one, and through the case study on the innovation processes in three Italian leading textile companies. Among these three firms, the second activity was based on the practice-centred approach of research through design. Starting from the Design-Driven Innovation agenda, an action-research method was specifically drawn up with one textile company, in order to test a design-driven research paradigm and to develop new concepts for a new textile material. The first phase included direct participative observation of the ordinary activity of research and product development of the company, in order to gain the trust of both the executives and the other team members, to deepen the knowledge of the company and gain insights into the competences within the textiles chain. A second phase consisted of the formalization of the Design-Discourse network of the company into a Design-Driven Laboratory, involving 5 players external to the company: 3 artists, a new-technology advisor for a Venture Capital new-tech exploration and a textile material Engineer working as technology-transfer manager. Only the third phase was a faithful reinterpretation of a Design-Driven Innovation model for the development of new concepts for textile materials. In this case, the researcher played the brokering role of the Designer. This step involved the launch and management of the research activity with the artists and the international exploration of new technologies and studies for textiles. At the end of the third phase a presentation of all the outcomes, both from the artistic and technological research, was made to the company staff, and the two shared concepts were elaborated upon. The main results of the research are the novel model of textile design, specifically for the Italian industry, and the adoption of an explicit Design-led Practice by a B2B textile company. The original contribution of knowledge of this research is the refined definition of textile design practice and a proposal for the role and competencies for textile designers. Thus, a partial validation that a design-driven approach is desirable for the invention of textile concepts and innovation of textile products was achieved. Although one fully developed project may not be sufficient to confirm the reliability of the Design-driven Innovation model within the textile industry, the elaboration of the theories also derived from this case opens new trajectories for future development in textile design and research in textiles.

Il settore tessile italiano sta cercando di affrontare l’attuale scenario competitivo globalizzato. Si tratta di un settore industriale tradizionale, labour-intensive, profondamente radicato nel panorama industriale italiano, di altissima qualità, ora però costretto a sostenere le sfide imposte dalla massiccia immissione sul mercato di prodotti tessili –a basso costo- da paesi di più recente sviluppo industriale (Est Europa e Far East). Questa ricerca verte sull’analisi critica del settore e dei suoi processi creativi, e infine sull’ipotesi di implementazione di processi design-oriented. La ricerca parte con un’approfondita analisi dello stato dell’arte per quanto concerne: - il settore industriale tessile: lo scenario macro e micro economico, le geografie produttive, la mappatura della/e filiera/e, le frontiere di innovazione tecnologica; - organizzazione del processo creativo - le strutture organizzative: evoluzione e raffigurazione dei profili professionali - modelli formativi: fotografia interpretativa dei percorsi formativi - La valenza semiotica del tessuto e delle sue applicazioni nel contesto moda. Tra i processi design-oriented emerge il Design Driven Innovation (DDI: Innovazione tecnologia + significato, cfr. F.Zurlo e R.Verganti), documentato da casi studio in altri settori di Made in Italy assimilabili a quello del Tessile-Abbigliamento. La ricerca si propone di promuovere e analizzare lo sviluppo di un nuovo prodotto tessile secondo un processo di DDI. A partire da schemi esistenti e validati di DDI, si struttura uno schema da applicare al contesto tessile. Questo schema prevede: 1. l’identificazione di un tema/scenario di tendenza; 2. la ricerca e identificazione di un’applicazione tecnologica radicalmente innovativa adeguata allo scenario scelto; 3. l’identificazione e il coinvolgimento di interpreti chiave dello scenario sia nel mondo della produzione culturale che nel mondo tecnologico, alla luce della tecnologia identificata. 4. l’avvio del processo, con la spiegazione dell’attività e lancio del tema ai singoli interpreti; 5. il monitoraggio della ricerca effettuata dai singoli interpreti 6. la raccolta delle visioni dei singoli interpreti 7. l’elaborazione da parte della candidata di un concept di prodotto 8. la progettazione del prodotto in collaborazione con gli interpreti afferenti al mondo produttivo. La ricerca verte quindi sulla partecipazione attiva e sull’analisi critica -punti di forza, debolezza, opportunità, rischi e possibili miglioramenti- di un processo di DDI nel settore Tessile Abbigliamento.