📊Visual Summary
Marcos Antonio de Lima Filho, PhD.
This thesis is the result of nearly a decade of research into product design innovation. This Visual Summary provides an expanded abstract and a snapshot view of the major contributions from How Product Designs Evolve, designed for easy understanding and navigation. Dive in and explore the discoveries that made this PhD journey so rewarding.
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Products evolve as a result of our ever-changing needs and preferences. This evolution mirrors the process of biological evolution, where each product generation builds on and modifies the work of its predecessors. There is ongoing debate about whether technological evolution follows Darwinian or Lamarckian principles, but this lack of consensus among scholars has hindered the development of a structured model to explain technological evolution. This thesis proposes a new perspective on the evolution of design by categorising innovation into four types: disruptive, directional, stabilising, and purifying innovation.
Disruptive Innovation introduces new qualities, features, or product categories. In effect, disruptive innovations increase technological diversity in markets.
In comparison, Directional Innovation augments present qualities, characteristics, or product features in an incremental manner.
Despite the widespread bias that favours radical and disruptive concepts, incremental innovations should not be ignored as their accumulation over time still leads to significant changes, such as greener and fuel-efficient aircraft, as well as cheaper, faster and bigger smartphones.
Drawing on parallels with natural selection patterns, I suggest the addition of two new patterns of technological selection to complement the existing disruptive and incremental categories:
Stabilising Innovation stabilises a given trait around an optimal value, maintaining the status quo and favouring optimal variations.
Purifying Innovation involves discontinuing, rejecting, or replacing certain parts of a design, simplifying and optimising it.
These different types of innovation contribute to a punctuated model of industrial evolution, where periods of stability are disrupted by periods of rapid change. The model stresses the importance of aligning innovation strategies with the industry’s current stage of evolution.
The purpose of this study was to explain the processes driving design evolution in various industries, not just specific markets like smartphones and commercial aviation. The data demonstrates the presence of these natural selection patterns in these two highly dissimilar industries, which suggests that these patterns of design evolution are not limited to specific technologies and thus can be applied more broadly.
The literature review explores the connections between Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection with the theories of design and disruptive innovation. The first part discusses the limited research on design evolution in leading design research journals (Section 2.2). The second part introduces the foundational principles of evolutionary thought, including its history and specific mechanisms of natural selection (Section 2.3). The chapter ends with an introduction to disruptive innovation theory, thus providing a foundation for the upcoming discussion on disruption (Section 2.8).
I define Disruptive Innovation as the introduction of a new qualitative trait into an existing architecture, or the introduction of a new architecture. This definition is drawn from evolutionary theory and its pattern of disruptive selection, differing from Clayton Christensen’s definition that focuses on a specific mechanism of resource allocation and business strategy.
Based on this evolutionary understanding of disruption, the results reported in this section illustrate how the evolution of passenger aircraft has been influenced by the adoption of various new components and features (i.e., new qualities). Examples of disruptive technologies include geared turbofans, ultra-high-bypass engines, head-up displays, fly-by-wire systems, and electronic instruments (Section 4.1: Disruptive Innovation in Aircraft). This section also presents various emerging technologies in commercial aviation.
The following graphs result from the analysis of 54,793 aircraft registries produced between 1932 and 2020 by 54 manufacturers distributed worldwide. You can download the data here.
Besides incorporating new components and systems, commercial aviation has also evolved along incremental variables. The data presented in this section demonstrate decades of continuous improvements in engine efficiency, aerodynamics and overall aircraft performance.
Fuel efficiency is a key measure of aircraft evolution, influenced by aerodynamic improvements, weight reduction, and more efficient engines. Thanks to continuous improvements in these areas, aircraft entering service today consume up to 79% less fuel per seat compared to the first jets introduced in the early 1950s. Previous studies have confirmed this trend, though the reported figures of fuel burn reductions vary (see the discussion on Directional Innovation in Commercial Aircraft).
The stability of designs is crucial for both living organisms and designed objects. Stabilisation ensures that organisms and products can function effectively and efficiently in their environments. In biological evolution, stabilising selection acts to preserve the status quo by favouring traits that are well-adapted to the prevailing environment and weeding out harmful mutations.
Similarly, stabilisation is observed in the design of artefacts and the evolution of industries. Certain design concepts, like the "tube and wing" configuration in commercial aviation, endure for extended periods due to their efficiency and reliability. Stabilisation in design can be attributed to technical and sociocultural constraints, as well as functional specialisation, established habits and standards. Therefore, the concept of "stabilising innovation" is proposed, which recognises the importance of stability while still allowing for adaptation and integration of new features.
In this thesis, I introduce the concept of “purifying innovation”, which involves the replacement, discontinuation, or rejection of components, technological standards, or features in a designed artefact.
Purifying innovation is a common practice among Apple’s lineup of products, such as the MacBook. Iteration after iteration, Apple pushed for the elimination of several ports from its line of laptops, including widely adopted technologies such as optical disc drives (CDs and DVDs). This decision was based on the rising popularity of downloadable content, which made discs unnecessary. The strategy allowed for a thinner and lighter laptop design, and also left room for a larger battery.
But purifying innovation goes beyond aesthetics and slimness, as it also brings economic advantages. The discontinuation of a hardware component saved Apple millions of dollars while also creating new profit streams through content distribution (the Mac App Store) and cloud-based services (iCloud).
Purifying innovations can be further classified based on their driving factors. These include instances where a new technology supersedes an existing one, referred to as technological replacement. Other cases involve the discontinuation of an established feature or when consumers reject a newly introduced feature.
In conclusion, the process of design evolution can be understood through a dynamic model that incorporates the principles of evolutionary theory and natural selection. In nascent industries, there is a high rate of product innovation and experimentation as diverse technologies and design concepts emerge. This dynamic and uncertain environment fosters disruptive selection, where companies explore diverse designs to find the most successful solution. As industries mature, a dominant design emerges and innovation focuses on refining and improving the established design.
This shift from disruptive to directional/incremental innovation marks a transition to a more stable phase of industrial evolution. Eventually, industries may reach a state of technological stasis and decline, leading to the discard of previous designs. Therefore, understanding the full cycle of disruption, replication, and discard is essential for a comprehensive understanding of design evolution.
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