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Step = 2230
Fig. 11.9 A snapshot for Setting 3—Producer-Consumer interaction, showing the active set of
designs (black dots) using Rule 3—Maximize performance/cost ratio, recorded when the target
slower
11.7 Discussion
The results substantiate the argument that interactions between Consumers and
Producers in the post-design phase are essential to the process of innovation.
Producers need to combine several types of learning in order to shape the post-
design outcomes and to feed into the pre-design and design activities to follow.
First, they need to gain tacit knowledge to achieve improvements in performance/
cost ratio. In a sense, the design phase only offers the promise and potential for a
certain performance/cost goal to be achieved. Whether that promise and potential is
realized depends on whether the Producer has sufficient persistence and follow-
through to avoid excessive diversification, and also sufficient flexibility and open-
ness not to get stuck in a narrow range if it precludes other, more promising paths.
Second, the Producer must continually learn and adapt to what the marketplace
defines as 'value'. Certainly, market research and testing can help here, but this
learning mostly happens through engagement with the market and Consumers
through post-design activities of selling, servicing, and customizing.
Consumers, too, engage in post-design 'work' of a sort. Through their shifting
and emergent preferences and surprising discoveries of new functions and new
significance, they reshape the value landscape both for Producers and also other
Consumers. In future experiments, we expect to see patterns of reinforcing inter-
actions between Producers and Consumers, but maybe also inhibiting interactions,
too, maybe in surprising ways.
While the results in this paper are illustrative and suggestive, we believe they
begin to show value of Computational Social Science methods in studying
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