Connecting for Impact - Multidisciplinary Approaches to Innovation in Small to Medium Sized enterprises (SMEs)

This paper reveals the methodology developed and adopted by groups of Multidisciplinary Design Innovation Masters students whilst working on projects with regional Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SME’s). It exposes an eight-stage approach and shows how the creation of a ‘problem-space tapestry’ acts as a mediator between different disciplinary approaches. The authors used a combination of observation, interview, post project-analysis and auto ethnographic reflection in order to uncover this process and to draw conclusions about the conditions that are necessary to support university based multidisciplinary design-led innovation projects of this type.