Crafting competitive advantage: Crafts knowledge as a strategic resource

This paper describes how, through its alliances with crafts-based designers, a UK pewter manufacturer has transformed its learning capabilities, adding value to its products and creating new organizational knowledge. Drawing on literature from the fields of design management, organizational learning and crafts theory, a three part model is proposed which describes the contribution of crafts knowledge and cognition in this process, as a means of stimulating innovation, of integrating expertise, and of disseminating and stabilizing learning. The impact of organizational structure upon project success is analyzed, and the company's strategic and competitive gain described and evaluated. It is concluded that crafts knowledge may constitute a powerful strategic design tool when, as in the case described, it is managed appropriately and recognized as a unique amalgamation of cognitive, social and technical skills rather than a purely aesthetic resource. © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd.