Design Research - Critique - Article Example

Design Research- Article Critique Building a corporate brand The article ‘Building a corporate brand: the internal brand building process in Swedish firms’ is written by three authors; Asa Wallstrom, Ted Karlsson, and Esmail Salehi-Sangari. In the article, the authors aim to uncover how corporate brands can be effectively developed by exploring the internal corporate brand-building process in Swedish service firms (Wallstrom, Karlsson & Salehi-Sangari 2008, p.41). The authors employ a qualitative study approach by investigating three selected firms and their internal brand building process.

The strength of the article lies in its methodology. The authors employ purposive sampling to find and select illustrative cases of the firms that had initiated brand-building process. The authors also selected three Swedish firms with strong brand image making their results to be of note. The article also employed personal interviews as their main data collection which offers further credibility to their findings. Pre-testing of the data collection tools also offers strength to the findings and article (Aggarwal 2008, p.123). A weakness in the research article is that its study sample size of three firms appears limited and small.

The article’s findings are of use considering the fragmented literature available on brand building from an internal perspective. Further, this article can be of use to managers who are interested in developing strong brands by providing indicators to how a firm can respond to scandals, geographical expansion, and or brand repositioning. The article’s findings are relevant to current practices in corporate branding. It further highlights emergent trends that should provide base for future research in regard to the implementation phase of corporate branding (Glynn & Woodside 2009, p.63). The article has a good structure as it provides an abstract first, then a literature review, followed by methodology, then the results and a conclusion.

It makes it easy for the reader to follow and understand its contents.Innovation, growth, and getting to where you want to go In their article ‘innovation, growth, and getting to where you want to go’, Ryan Jacoby and Diego Rodriguez seek to give advice to their readers on how to thoughtfully structure the innovation process (Jacoby & Rodriguez 2007, p.10). They aim at presenting managers with a model that helps them to assess and direct innovation efforts. The authors provide evolved and refined tools that employ design thinking to assist their clients to shape their innovation efforts.

The strength of the article lies in its step by step approach towards design thinking and innovation. The authors clearly provide the step by step procedure under clear subheadings in question form. A weakness in the article is that the author’s findings do not seem to be grounded empirically. The authors do not provide a clear study approach to their study by not stating their research design. The article has a formal structure but lacks a clear outline. It contains an introduction which is then followed by the steps towards increasing efficiency and effectiveness of ones effort in the innovation process.

The article does not have a clear outline which makes one to easily get lost along the various subheadings before stumbling upon the concluding subheading. The information in the article is useful. The authors provide the reader with what they term as a ‘ways to grow model’ in assessing and directing innovation, which is refreshing. The innovation concepts and strategies suggested in the article appear similar to other business innovative concepts found under various sources such as books and the internet (Trott 2008, p.89). The author’s research is reliable considering their professional backgrounds.

However, it is difficult to validate their claims as they do not provide a study design for their research.References Aggarwal, S., 2008. Brand Management: A Theoretical and Practical Approach. New Delhi: Global India Publications.Asa Wallstrom, T. K.-S., 2008. Building a corporate brand: The internal brand building process in Swedish service fi rms. Brand Management, 40-50.Mark S. Glynn, A. G., 2009. Business-to-business Brand Management: Theory, Research and Executive Case Study Exercises. New York: Emerald Group Publishing.

Ryan Jacoby, D. R., 2007. Innovation, growth, and getting to where you want to go. Design management review, 10-15.Trott, P., 2008. Innovation Management and New Product Development. New York: Financial Times/Prentice Hall.