Atitude de design estratégico: desenvolvimento e aplica-ção de instrumento de pesquisa no contexto de P&D de alimentos

Abstract

The present work developed a survey instrument to measure the Strategic Design Attitude in individuals with different fluencies in Design (food Research and Development (R&D) professionals and designers, n=190). Despite the relevance of its contributions to organizations, Strategic Design has a limited presence in the food industry. One way to establish a bridge is through the R&D area, involved in innovation and new food projects. By understanding the individual attitudes of pro-fessionals in this sector, the penetration of Design Culture into these organizations can be facilitated from a bottom-up perspective. Previous research has argued that the Strategic Design Attitude is formed by 7 independent variables: Metaprojectual View, Collective Building, Connecting Multiple Perspectives, Creativity, Empathy, Ambiguity Tolerance, Engagement with Aesthetics. The final instrument had 42 items, which also assessed the relationship of this Attitude with 5 dependent varia-bles relevant to innovation: team learning, process satisfaction, innovation out-comes, breadth of outcomes, and scenario design. The theoretical and semantic val-idation process demonstrated the distance between the two professional cultures, which challenges the application of a single instrument to measure the Strategic Design Attitude in any individual, regardless of his or her background. A conceptual model, predicting the relationships between the independent, dependent variables and Design Attitude, with the control variable Design fluency, was validated through structural equation modeling, with a median fit. No significant relationships were found between the independent variables and Strategic Design Attitude, which con-flicts with previous research on the topic. All dependent variables had significant relationships with Strategic Design Attitude. An alternative conceptual model, in which the Strategic Design Attitude is formed only by Collective Construction and Engagement with Aesthetics, found significant relationships and a good fit. Reflec-tions on cross-cultural instrument construction and perspectives for future research are offered.