Conexão entre micro e pequenas empresas e designers: estudo de plataformas de design

Abstract

The design process is traditionally developed by designers who work at the companies’ development and research departments or in offices outside them. The Micro and Small companies (MPEs), an expressive component in the Brazilian economic context, usually don’t have evolved departments, neither do they have organizational resources that allow them to give lasting internal collaboration with external professionals. From the encounter between new technologies and contemporaneous design, new forms of collaboration emerge, and they can open ways for inserting design even in smaller companies. The design platforms made for developing projects in chains, in fact, allow the remote connection with the multiplicity of freelance designers. The present study aims to analyze the development and functioning of design platforms for the interaction between MPEs and designers, understood as strategic instruments for inserting design in these organizational realities. From a theoretical reference about cooperation networks, strategic design and design platform, it is developed a multiple case study of an exploratory nature about this subject. Besides describing the art state of this new modality of business for design, the study focuses especially on the process approaches practiced in these platforms and the dynamics of interaction and cooperation between the actors that relate through them which are: articulators, designers and business people. The cases which were studied are the Maestro Project and Invalley Innovation and Design, which allows exploring different aspects of design platforms. While the Maestro Project’s process is to offer communication design to clients who did not have access to communication design because of the price and the geographical region of location, the Invalley Innovation and Design transforms knowledge from different sectors in profitable solutions, aiming to help companies generate competitiveness and value, through design and innovative projects. This study investigated the current reality of a new business modality and contextualized the importance of design platforms to leverage development and small innovations, and with the results obtained, it stands out: the (re)conceptualization of design platforms, a new market for design services, the consequences of design and the importance of cooperation in the project process.