Sustainability | Free Full-Text | Incremental Innovation: Long-Term Impetus for Design Business Creativity

In business, innovation thinking is expanding beyond product innovation, and it is being marketed as a catalyst for unique user experiences, businesses, and organizational and cultural change. Product design and design-driven business operations require an innovative mindset. In this study, we examined how progressive innovation thinking can be applied to three aspects using a combination of case studies: idea genesis, process, and decision making. We also examined thinking studies from relevant companies to investigate how to create user-pleasing experiences and details in products and to develop a framework for progressive innovation thinking strategies and implementation methods for designers. Our findings will help designers and corporate design teams find a steady flow direction in the execution of their design business, capture the first moments of brilliance and replicate ideas, generate a constant stream of creative ideas, maintain a constant flow of innovation in their design business, and enhance the overall business capability of the design team. This framework has academic and business ramifications: it can provide guidance and ideas to other design teams looking to execute their design business and act as a reference for adopting progressive, original thinking work and creative businesses.