Product Design: Research Trends andan Agendafor the Future

Academic research in product design is growing in popularity, and new challenging research questions are emerging. This article explores several of these product design research issues. We first explore the role of design as a driver of innovation and as a strategic resource to senior managers for competitive advantage. We revisit the topic of functional integration on the new product team, focusing in particular on the cooperation between designers and marketers. There is also a rich literature emerging on customer-initiated design and user toolkits for design, and we explore this intriguing stream as well. Considering these topics, and several others identified in a recent special issue on design research in the Journal of Product Innovation Management, we present an agenda for research in product design. We conclude with a discussion of how these design research trends affect researchers as well as practitioners involved in high-fashion or luxury-brand goods.