Design-driven innovation is a systematic and “user-driven” approach to the ideas stage in the development of new products, services, business processes or organisational forms based on the study of users’ lives, practices or needs, including unacknowledged or latent needs, which one may expect will be demanded.

The term “users” must be taken in the broadest sense of the word and may include consumers, customers, employees, organisations, partners, suppliers or other members of society. The process is characterised by an interdisciplinary coupling of design expertise from the very start of the project and an ability to transform any information gained into new business opportunities via concrete sketches, prototypes and descriptions of solutions.