Fashion Thinking: Towards an Actionable Methodology

AbstractThrough multiple case study analysis, the authors explain what fashion thinking is and how, as a methodology, it can inform innovation for a broad range of consumer products and services. Fashion thinking includes an actionable set of principles emerging from current fashion apparel business practices. Fashion thinking is a paradigm of critical thought and creative agency utilizing technology, story, experimentation, and open-sourcing in order to add meaning and value to the functional and experiential spheres of products and services. The authors identify five distinct features of fashion thinking: its engagement with temporal, spatial, and socially discursive dimensions, as well as the priority it places on the articulation of taste and balancing commercial goals with artistic innovations. Organizations whose goal is to be creative innovators and leaders in complex and ambiguous environments would benefit from incorporating fashion thinking into their product development and marketing cycles. Fashion thinking values flexibility, responsiveness, and open-source solutions—qualities that more sectors will need to embrace as digital technology accelerates the shift from physically-fixed products to the modular, just-in-time products and services that will define the twenty-first-century consumer landscape.