A Conception toward design narratives for innovation

Narrative has increasingly come to the forefront of both design and innovation management fields due to its essential properties which comprise both a human cognitive process and a mode of communication. However, cross-disciplinary arguments among design studies and innovation management from the narrative point of view are yet unexplored, even though their essential importance and potential for impacting innovation. Therefore, this paper aims to conceptualize a theoretical framework of “Design Narratives for Innovation”. Based on the approach to building a theoretical framework in qualitative research, the building blocks of the theory are carefully investigated and constructed. Through interdisciplinary conceptualization among design studies, innovation management studies and narrative studies after the contextual review, the conception is precisely stated; that is “the Design Narratives (DN) as worldmaking can facilitate and coordinate the design innovation process of co-evolution of problem and solution”. The theoretical framework can perform as “analytical and interpretative framework that helps the researchers make sense of what is going on in the social setting being studied” . Then, this theoretical framework can also guide “the way in which you think about, collect, analyze, describe and interpret” the data in the qualitative research, which the researcher plans to conduct as the sequential research activities.