ABSTRACT
In the current phase of innovation acceleration, a company launching new products with a signifi cant cultural and symbolic content also transforms its relationships with competitors. These products have an immediately perceptible differential value that will attract customers. The signs conveyed by a product thus play an increasingly important role. A growing number of fi rms elaborate product policies that call for expertise from industrial designers. These professionals not only create products with directly perceptible differentiating properties, they also anticipate cultural evolutions. Their expertise is solicited with the aim of renewing products and at the same time, asserting brand identities and the fi rm’s symbolic universe and know-how (Lorenz 1986; Dormer 1990).
