‘Creating Cultures of Innovation’ is a unique design intervention project that works with Scottish businesses to explore how to apply design approaches to transform in-house innovation capacity, boost employees’ use of skills, increasing motivation and productivity and providing creative leadership to support collective solution generation. Our research was developed from the findings of the Cox Review (2007) which defined ‘Design…, that which links creativity and innovation.’ Therefore, our hypothesis was could design act as a vehicle enhance and embed innovative capability in SMEs. This paper is a case study of our work with a Scottish company and our collaboration to understand how we might build the capacity for sustainable innovation, where creativity is permanently embedded in flexible, multi-disciplinary teams.

We will discuss key findings exploring and explaining the methodology, approach and give a general insight into how this case study furthers our understanding of how organisations build up resources for innovation. Integral to this is an understanding of how we make effective use of established knowledge, insights and expertise, and liberate (or at least tap into) knowledge, skills and competences that reside within firms. (Paton & Karunaratne, 2009)