Extremely stimulating and exciting - The influence of the designer as enthusiast on innovation processes

Design thinking has been widely applied as interdisciplinary innovation approach. Simultaneously inclusion of external designers for collaborative learning cycles across different departments have significantly gained importance. However in the context of these debates around design as approach and designers as external support, research has paid little attention as to what really happens when designers meet non-designers in innovation processes. We clarify and extend on this literature through drawing on the concept of enthusiasm. We use this concept as foil to analyse collaboration between non-designers and designers and describe how designer as enthusiast influence innovation processes. The study identifies effects of the designer as enthusiast on innovation processes. And it describes interdependencies between the characteristics of the groups and the effect of the designer as enthusiast.