Brixen, September 15, 2006 Alessi : Family Follows Fiction

Brixen, September 15, 2006

Alessi: Family Follows Fiction

© Roberto Verganti, Claudio Dell’Era – Dipartimento di Ingegneria Gestionale, Politecnico di Milano

Agenda

Company overview

Open innovation process Process structure Centro Studi Alessi: gatekeeper Importance of external designers

A breakthrough innovation: Family Follows Fiction Concept Actor Network theory (ANT) Application of the ANT


Company history

In 1921 Giovanni Alessi bought a plot of land at Omegna and founded Alessi

The company started to develop a design style of its own only during the thirties, when Carlo Alessi joined the company

In the early seventies Alberto Alessi, Carlo’s son, started since the beginning of his career in Alessi to deal with new-products development, marketing and communication

In subsequent years several other designers started to collaborate with Alessi: Coppola, Grignani, Tovaglia, Confalonieri, Sottsass, Sapper, Rossi, Castiglioni, Mari, Starck, Graves, etc.

The end of the nineties marks Alessi's last evolution. The "dream factory" has become a research laboratory in the field of applied arts


Economic figures

Nowadays the company employs about 500 people, who are directly involved in project development, production, sales and distribution

Turnover around 100 million euro

Alessi is exporting the 65% of its turnover to over 60 countries

5000 points of sale, 14 Alessi stores (Showroom and Flagship), 175 Shop in shop

Alessi headquarters bears the mark of the Atelier Mendini

The Alessi company has recently obtained an exclusive concession by Fiera Milano, an entire pavilion inside the “exhibition centre”


Open innovation process

Process fundamentally based on creativity and on long-lasting strict personal relationships between Alessi and its external designers

Homogeneous set of organizational routines through which each new project is conceived, evaluated and its essential ‘design philosophy’ maintained Metaproject -> Brief Workshop -> Evaluation & “Desiderata” Engineering

META-PROJECT

Knowledge about socio-

cultural trends

Brief

CONTINUOUS RESEARCH

WORKSHOP

Evaluation &

Desiderata

ENGINEERING


Centro Studi Alessi: the gatekeeper

Centro Studi Alessi (CSA) was conceived at the end of the 80s from an idea of Alberto Alessi, Alessandro Mendini and Laura Polinoro

CSA pursued the need to experiment new ways and methodology to design in order to work with young designers with a fresh approach


Centro Studi Alessi: the gatekeeper

Research provides theoretical foundations for the elaboration of the concept on which the metaproject will be based

The Metaproject defines the typologies of objects to design, collects the company's needs, and gives the esthetical criteria as well as the cultural and visual stimuli to the designers

Through the Workshop the metaproject is elaborated and ideas exchanged with the selected designers and the technical team of Alessi

The first two operations - metaprojects conceptualized and coordinated by Laura Polinoro for CSA were: "Memory Containers" and "Family Follows Fiction - FFF"


Importance of external designers

Name Country of Origin Born 1st Alessi collaboration

Ettore Sottsass Italy 1917 1976

Alessandro Mendini Italy 1931 1977

Richard Sapper Germany 1932 1979

Aldo Rossi Italy 1931 (deceased 1997) 1980

Achille Castiglioni Italy 1918 (deceased 2002) 1982

Micheal Graves United States 1934 1985

Stefano Giovannoni Italy 1954 1986

Philippe Starck France 1949 1986

Guido Venturini Italy 1957 1986

Enzo Mari Italy 1932 1989

Frank Gehry Canada 1929 1992

Marco Zanuso Italy 1916 1995

George Sowden United Kingdom 1942 1997

Ron Arad Israel 1951 1998

Sir Norman Foster United Kingdom 1935 1998

Jasper Morrison United Kingdom 1959 1998

Marc Newson Australia 1963 1999Alessi’s Maestros, in 2003 Alessi listed, among others, the following designers in its catalogue and on its website (Moon Y, Dessain V and Sjöman A. Alessi: Evolution of an Italian Design Factory (B). Harvard Business School, 2004)


Family Follows Fiction

Alessi stimulated a group of designers to explore the creative potential of plastics, that they had not probably considered designing for Alessi in the past, due to the company’s focus on steel products and technologies

Products that satisfied user experiences such as, the need for tenderness, delicacy and intimacy. They felt the need to shake off their parameters


Actor Network Theory (ANT)

Sociology (‘80s)

Principal references Callon M, Law J and Rip A (1986). Mapping the Dynamics of Science and

Technology: Sociology of Science in the Real World, Macmillan Press, London. Latour B (1986). Visualization and Cognition: Thinking with Eyes and Hands,

in Knowledge and Society: Studies in Sociology of Culture Past and Present, 6, pp. 1-40.

Latour B (1987). Science in Action, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Bijker W.E., Law J., Shaping Technology/ Building Society. Studies in

Sociotechnical Change, Cambridge, Massachusetts/ London, England: The MIT Press, pp. 259-264.

Principal concepts Actant (human and not human) Network Meaning

© Roberto Verganti, Claudio Dell’Era – Dipartimento di Ingegneria Gestionale, Politecnico di MilanoFonte: Tesi di laurea “Actor Network Theory: un nuovo approccio per l’analisi di innovazioni design driven. Applicazione ai casi di Alessi, Apple e Kartell” di Erica Loviso

Documents

Brixen, September 15, 2006 Alessi : Family Follows Fiction