Marketing in SMEs: the sales process of SMEs on the food and drink industry.

There would appear to be varied approaches to the sales process practiced by SMEs in how they go about locating target customers, interfacing with prospects and new customers, presenting the benefits and features of their products and services, closing sales deals and building relationships, and an understanding of what the buyers needs are in the seller-buyer process. Recent research has revealed that while entrepreneurs and small business owners rely upon networking as an important source of sales, they lack marketing competencies, including personal selling skills and knowledge of what is involved in the sales process to close sales deals and build relationships. Small companies and start-ups with innovative products and services often find it difficult to persuade potential buyers of the merits of their offerings because, while the products and services may be excellent, they have not sufficiently well-developed selling skills necessary to persuade their target customers.

Design thinking - a critical analysis.

The latest buzz phrase to enter the world of design research is “Design Thinking”. But is this anything new and does it really have any practical or theoretical relevance to the design world? Many sceptics believe the term has more to do with business strategy and little to do with the complex process of designing products, services and systems. Moreover, many view the term as misleading and a cheap attempt to piggyback the world of business management onto design. This paper seeks to ask is design thinking anything new? Several authors have explicitly or implicitly articulated the term “Design Thinking” before, such as Peter Rowe’s seminal book “Design Thinking” [1] first published in 1987 and Herbert Simon’s “The Sciences of the Artificial” [2] first published in 1969. In Tim Brown’s “Change by Design” [3], design thinking is thought of as a system of three overlapping spaces rather than a sequence of orderly steps namely inspiration – the problem or opportunity that motivates the search for solutions; ideation – the process of generating, developing and testing ideas; and implementation – the path that leads from the design studio, lab and factory to the market. This paper seeks to examine and critically analyse the tenets of this new design thinking manifesto set against three case studies of modern design practice. As such, the paper will compare design thinking theory with the reality of design in practice.