design industries and the car is a good example, basic design remains stable, and so the
different designers know more or less what to expect from one another, and can thus get on
with their work, largely in isolation, thereby being able to enhance their specialisations and
re-inforce their particular design reality.
This model is often quite comforting to both designers and managers but it is not a model that
encourages real innovation. Innovation tends to come out of the separate chimneys.
Nevertheless, this form of structure has created some very successful enterprises and should
not be entirely dismissed.
In the past, when the flaws in this chimney model were first identified, some firms tried an
alternative. This was to decide which aspect of design was the most important and to cede
power to this group. For a while Ford tried placing industrial design in the dominant role with
the industrial designers, or stylists as they are often known in the car industry, developing the
initial design with other designers in engineering having to conform to it. However, the
reverse situation is probably more often seen, where engineers dominate and the industrial
designers are bought in to wrap the engineers’ product in some kind of pretty skin that ensures
that the whole thing ends up being attractive and, “user friendly”.