The Value of Industrial Design in Malaysian SMEs

Abstract

Industrial design has long existed in Malaysia from the making of traditional furniture to hand made craft using materials from wood, metal or fabric. Over the time, the influence of industrial design in Malaysia has slowly disappeared in the industry because some of the considerations or perceptions of whether it is able to provide returns to its designers and the perception of some people who are unaware or lack the understanding of its importance and value. Previous studies have shown that there are managers in companies who have problem in understanding whether industrial design has value to the company although there have been many researches that attempted to quantify the contribution of industrial design to improve company performance. This study chooses the Balanced Scorecard framework to explore the industrial design’s value because in order to assess how organisations manage and deliver the value to the stakeholders and customers, the organisation should be evaluated by measuring the performance. based on financial and non-financial performance measures for new product development, this study uses measures such as customer orientation, employees’ orientation, competitiveness orientation and strategic partners’ orientation for non-financial performance and growth, profitability, liquidity, efficiency and revenue for the financial performance..