Abstract
Design maturity is a critical yet under examined dimension of innovation capability, particularly among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This study investigates how Taiwan’ s design policy- driven innovation initiative—a state-sponsored policy intervention—facilitates the strategic integration of design in both manufacturing and design service firms. Adopting a qualitative action research approach, we analysed eight participating firms and inductively derived a three-tiered model of design maturity: Design-Aware, Design-Capable, and Design-Led. Drawing on thematic and discourse analyses, we trace firms’ evolution from reactive, appearance-driven outsourcing to the institutional is ation of design as a governance mechanism. Hewlett-Packard’s D3 Matrix served as a conceptual scaffold to examine how design capabilities intersect with business processes, experience systems, and technological assets. The findings suggest that the initiative influences design capability not only through financial incentives, but also by fostering shared language, codifying routines, and supporting collaborative learning and reflective design practices. We argue that design maturity is iterative and context-sensitive, requiring adaptive policy design, sustained ecosystem support, and a deliberate cultivation of organisational cognition and discourse. This study contributes to design integration scholarship by offering a contextualised, empirically grounded typology of policy-enabled design transformation.
Keywords
Design Maturity; Policy Intervention; Strategic Integration; Design Capability
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.861
Citation
Lei, S.T., Huang, L.,and Sher, C.(2025) From Styling to Strategy: Cultivating Design Maturity through Taiwan's Design Policy Intervention, in Chang, C.-Y., and Hsu, Y. (eds.), IASDR 2025: Design Next, 02-05 December, Taiwan. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.861
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Track 10 - Design Practices & Impacts
From Styling to Strategy: Cultivating Design Maturity through Taiwan's Design Policy Intervention
Design maturity is a critical yet under examined dimension of innovation capability, particularly among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This study investigates how Taiwan’ s design policy- driven innovation initiative—a state-sponsored policy intervention—facilitates the strategic integration of design in both manufacturing and design service firms. Adopting a qualitative action research approach, we analysed eight participating firms and inductively derived a three-tiered model of design maturity: Design-Aware, Design-Capable, and Design-Led. Drawing on thematic and discourse analyses, we trace firms’ evolution from reactive, appearance-driven outsourcing to the institutional is ation of design as a governance mechanism. Hewlett-Packard’s D3 Matrix served as a conceptual scaffold to examine how design capabilities intersect with business processes, experience systems, and technological assets. The findings suggest that the initiative influences design capability not only through financial incentives, but also by fostering shared language, codifying routines, and supporting collaborative learning and reflective design practices. We argue that design maturity is iterative and context-sensitive, requiring adaptive policy design, sustained ecosystem support, and a deliberate cultivation of organisational cognition and discourse. This study contributes to design integration scholarship by offering a contextualised, empirically grounded typology of policy-enabled design transformation.