Abstract:

Networks and relationships between market, production and design are dominated by two key actors: i) on the one hand, the end user and companies’ ability to catch, or better to anticipate, his/her inclinations, ii) on the other hand, the companies themselves, who need to modify their interaction, internally, with mother companies and suppliers and externally with the market.
Indeed, companies have already started to consider the final user as an active player. The process is still taking place, but the user is essentially perceived and interpreted as a an final “antenna” in the market, placed outside the company.
In addition, all the recent changes, economical, social, cultural and technological, have forced companies to substantially modify their organizational structure vis-à-vis the production process. Companies have transitioned from a traditional rigidity to a new flexible structure, better suited to react to an “environmental disorder”. The impact is dual: i) on the one hand communication flows inside the group are redesigned, balancing the equilibrium according to the needs of the project; ii) on the other hand, traditional company boundaries are challenged, to reconsider what is inside and what remains outside of the company itself.
Over the years, key paradigms of the management theory and its practices and, more generally, the interaction between market and companies have shown their limits. This requires a revision, which is taking place.
As a result, a new type of relationship exists and is developing between the players involved in the design, production and utilisation of a product. In particular, the final user has an unique role and becomes main actor, side by side with the traditional partners of the company. Any development process must take into account and integrate the participation of different stakeholders, some external and less buyest of the company’s values. These interactions enrich the network of the relationship and characterise the connectivity of the system. Of course, the creation of these connections is linked to IT developments, required tool to make the connectivity work.
After all, the evolution under way and the expansion of the company boundaries, as described before, are an acknowledgement of the new role of the customer, no longer a static reality, but a systematic complexity. In other words, the acting consumers is a self-standing system and source of knowledge, within is his/her own environment where he/she confronts him/herself with the market offer.