Bio:

Ongoing Research and Selected Publications

Editorial experience

Journal of Product Innovation Management

• Co-editor-in-chief (2025-2028)
• Special Issue editor: Responsible Innovation with Ian Sinapuelas, Phil Macnaghten, and Chenwei Li. May 31^st 2024 submission date. See Special Issue Call for Papers here.
• Associate Editor JPIM (2022-2024)
  • Decisions on 12-15 Manuscripts per year
  • Represented JPIM in a Meet The Editors session at the PICMET conference in Portland, Oregon in August 2022.
    • Session had editors of IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Technology Forecasting and Organizational Change representing
    • 40+ attendees in the session
  • Manager Reviewer Development Program (RDP) (2022-Present): Engaged reviewers and good reviews form the lifeblood of a good peer-reviewed journal. I worked with the JPIM EiC’s to design, develop, deploy, and administer JPIM’s first RDP. See 2023-2024 Call for Participants here. Reviewing for well-known peer-reviewed journals provides several benefits including developing as a scholar (e.g., improving critical thinking, increasing domain knowledge, improving research execution capabilities, improving research explication capabilities, improving knowledge about responding to reviewers of your their research, improving knowledge about the journal’s editorial stance etc.), career benefits, personal fulfillment among others. The JPIM RDP is intended to help early-career reviewers learn about the full peer-review process and train them to provide high quality reviews.
    • Process: Mentees first attend one synchronous online training workshop about how to write good reviews and how to write better manuscripts
    • Over the period of year they are assigned two mentors (ERB member) and four manuscripts to review
    • Multiple workshops are held to provide mentees feedback on the reviews, see other reviews, see the reports from Associate Editors, and Editor’s decision letters. In this way mentees see behind the scenes of how journal decisions are made by JPIM editorial staff,
    • at the end of the program, the trainees receive a course completion certificate that can help in their job search, and
    • at the discretion of the editors and the program manager, they are added to the JPIM reviewer pool and a select few are provided a pathway to be added into the ERB.
    • Program outcome: in AY 2022-2023, 20 Assistant professors, Post Docs, and Ph.D. students underwent the one-year multi-faceted program where participants worked with six mentors.

Conference co-chairing and track chair

• Track Chair for Responsible Innovation The 30^th Innovation and Product Development Management Conference 2023 (in Lecco, Italy) with Carsten Schultz and Robert Kok
  • 17 papers received 14 accepted

• 2013-2014: Conference Co-Chair (with Barry Bayus of University of North Carolina Chapel Hill) of the Product Development Management Association’s 2013 Academic Research Forum: responsibilities included, Editorial job of reviewing, finding and assigning reviewers and making acceptance and rejection decisions on almost 70 submitted manuscripts, setting the conference agenda and running the conference.
• Track Co-chair (with Subin Im) for “New Product Development, Product Management and Entrepreneurship” track for the 2011 summer AMA conference: Editorial job of reviewing, finding and assigning reviewers and making acceptance and rejection decisions on over 40 submitted manuscripts,

Other Service to discipline

• Scientific Committee Member Innovation and Product Development Management Conference (2023-)
• The 30^th International Product Development Management Conference 2023 (in Lecco, Italy) Jury member for best papers (Tom Hustad and Krister Karlsson Best paper Awards)
• Organized annual Responsible Innovation Conference at SF State (With Chenwei Li and Ian Sinapuelas): lead the organization of the Inaugural RI&E Research Conference on April 21st and 22nd 2023
  • One of the originators of RI, Phil Macnaghten, was Keynote Speaker
  • Rippleworks CEO Doug Galen was featured in a fireside chat with Geoff Desa on the topic of responsible entrepreneurship and social innovation
  • Founder- directors of RI and practitioners of RI at Meta and Google in panel discussions
  • Invited Guest Speakers: 13, Number of registrants: 95, 90+ In-person attendances over the two days
• Lead the organization of a JPIM Paper Development Workshop at SF State (With Chenwei Li and Ian Sinapuelas) on April 22, 2023
  • worked with the editors of Journal of Product Innovation Management and developed a CfP.
  • Secured facility and managed all logistical needs
  • Garnered nine high-quality scholarly papers from across the United States and internationally.
  • During the highly intensive full day in-person PDW participants were given intensive training to develop their paper into a JPIM submission. Three participants were from Lam Family College of Business and the others were from the following institutions: Aarhus University, Babson College, San Diego State University, University of North Dakota, Auckland University of Technology, and the University of Burgundy. It was a mixture of Professors (full, associates, and un tenured),
• Reviewing conference papers and research proposals for Product Development Management Association (PDMA) (2011- present, two or three papers a year)
• PDMA Academic Committee Member (2022-)
• Academic Vice President Product Development Management Association (PDMA) 2019-2022 (Pro Bono Three year term):  As the VP of Academics, I was responsible for all the academic activities of PDMA (Chairing the Academic committee, PDMA’s annual conference and the JPIM Research Forum, PDMA Doctoral Consortium, PDMA Dissertation Proposal Competition, designing and implementing new academic initiatives such as the PDMA Research Competition). PDMA also publishes the Journal of Product Innovation Management.  This VP maintains a dotted line connection with the Co-Editors in Chief of JPIM. JPIM Research Forum along with the PDMA annual conference (over 300-person conference) brings together over 150 of the leading scholars in Innovation and Innovation Management with 150-200 practitioners of innovation, innovation management, and product development from the industry. The PDMA Doctoral consortium enhance the development of doctoral students who are conducting dissertation research in the domain of innovation and new product development. Students who are accepted into the Consortium will be honored as Doctoral Student Fellows and have a unique opportunity to network and meet and discuss ideas with leading innovation scholars and corporate executives in a collaborative, open, and sociable setting. The aim of the PDMA Dissertation Proposal Competition is to foster rigorous academic research on innovation and new product/service development and encourage close ties between the academic and corporate worlds.
• PDMA doctoral consortium Faculty Fellow
  • University of Illinois Urbana Champaign 2019
  • University of Tennessee Knoxville 2022
• 2015-2022: Editorial Board member for Journal of Product Innovation Management (JPIM)
  • Reviewing articles for the journal (3/4 articles per year)
  • Attending editorial board meetings regularly
  • Reviewing articles and recommending winners for various journal awards (Tom Hustad award, Abbie Griffin award among others)
• 2015- 2016 Social Media Manager for Journal of Product Innovation Management
  • JPIM provided $7500 to buy out a course to do this work. Based on this work JPIM has a large online following on multiple platforms (e.g., Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter etc.)
  • During this time, the Social media presence of the JPIM was second only to Journal of Academy of Marketing Science
• Reviewing conference papers and research proposals for (2011-present, two or three papers a years)
• Ad Hoc Reviewer for Journals: Journal of Marketing, Journal of Retailing, Journal of Business Ethics, European Journal of Marketing, among others.
• Reviewing manuscripts for conferences: American Marketing Association Conference, JPIM Research Forum, Association for Consumer Research, International Product Development Management Conference, Academy of Marketing Science Conference, Academy of Marketing Science World Marketing Conference, among others.

The information provided here is based on ongoing research being conducted by Professor Minu Kumar, and his research colleagues. It builds on previos work on Design Thinking (DT) by various authors and practitioners but particularly emphasizes the idea of reflective practice (c.f. Schon 2017). In line with Donald Schon’s suggestions for “reflection in practice”, the process of Ethical DT hinges on reflection at various key inflection points called “Ethical Reflect” (See Figure 1 below). The reflection is facilitated with various questions for the team to think through as they proceed with the project.

Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that the contents of this page are meant to be tools to inspire discussion amongst students and practitioners of design thinking & product development as opposed to any other purpose. If you have feedback on the tools below, please email me (mkumar@sfsu.edu). We welcome your feedback such that we can further improve these tools.

REFLECT: INTEGRATING ETHICAL-REFLECTION INTO THE DESIGN THINKING FRAMEWORK

Design Thinking (DT) has generated significant attention in business practice and research and has been promoted as a methodology well-suited to tackle the challenges faced by business organizations in new product design and development and innovation in general. However, the efficacy of the method, as practiced by professionals in business, has been questioned given that the process has sometimes been used to develop products that are either non-innovative, ethically questionable, or both. For example, the products developed by the company Juul used the DT process purportedly to help users quit smoking. In other words, it was supposed to function as a smoking cessation product, however, in reality the product is used in other ways predominantly by groups of users who have never smoked before or are new to smoking. Such examples abound in practice.

The goal of sharing this page is to have developers and firm leadership engage in difficult discussions such that due care is performed and more novel AND meaningful solutions are allowed to emerge. Liedtka (2015) notes that "while science and design are both hypothesis driven, the design hypothesis differs from the scientific hypothesis, according the process of abduction a key role." Given that  design often deals with issues that are paradoxical nature as it seeks to find higher-order solutions that accommodate seemingly opposite forces, it often creates novel forms/solutions through abductive reasoning. However, to make the novel solutions meaningful, a considerable amount of reflection needs to happen. Past research (e.g., Siedel and Fixson 2013) have demonstrated that teams that engage in more reflection create more meaningful solutions. We think that the way Design Thinking is being practiced currently (by companies that emphasize "move fast and break things") has relegated the "thinking" component to an afterthought. Furthermore, current innovation practices are resulting in firms that are often criticized for not doing due diligence (e.g., Artificial Intelligence products that have no embedded sentience and sapience) and privatizing profits and socializing risks (e.g., Purdue Pharma). Therefore, there is a need for design thinkers and product developers to reflect on their decisions during the DT process or new product development (NPD) process such that they can minimize future risks their products can create to various stakeholders.

In this page we provide teachers and practitioners of DT several tools that can help them engage in this reflection during their decision making process.

Step 1: Sensitizing the team about ethics in DT/NPD

The development team is sensitized to the topic of ethics using one or two of the scenarios provided in column three of Table 1. The facilitator can choose one or two of the scenarios and conduct the discussion based on one or two of the ethical approaches provided in column 1.

Table 1: An overview of ethical philosophy considerations in the context of design thinking

After the Discussion using the scenarios, the facilitator can continue the discussion posing the following questions:

1. In the context of your project, please explore if the team should adopt any particular ethical approach. Why or why not?
2. In the context of your project, are some ethical approaches more important to use than the others? Why or why not?
3. In the context of your project, are there critical “inflection” points where you should explore ethics-related questions? Why or why not?

This is done preferably at Inflection Point 1 in Figure 1.

Step 2: Refelection at various inflection points

At each Inflection Point, we recommend that the project manager present Ethical Reflect questions to surface relevant issues. For example, in the Define stage, the team members can be presented with any or some of the questions (based on relevance) posed in the Define Section. It needs to be emphasized that this is but one formulation of the set of questions for Reflect that can being used. We encourage instructors and practitioners to develop their own based on the question development framework we provided that are more contextually relevant to their needs. Please also note that in Tables below we present reflection questions that would be normally encountered during the DT process (column 2) and contrast it with questions that have ethical content (column 4).

Tool 1: For Inquire and Inspire Stage

Tools 2 through 9 are intended to help the developers think through the ethical issues that arise durung DT/NPD. Please keep in mind all these questions or tools may not be applicable to the context of your project. If there is a need for the team to reflect during the inquire and inspire stage, the questions below can aid in the reflection. Please note that in each of the tools (2-9) we make a distinction between regular reflection questions and questions that have ethical implications. Also, note that these are mere examples of questions one could ask and that teams should develop their own questions based on the context of their projects.

Tool 3: Problem Definition Stage

If there is a need for the team to reflect when they are defining the problem, the questions below can aid in the reflection. Please note that in the table below we make a distinction between regular reflection questions and questions that have ethical implications. Also, note that these are mere examples of questions one could ask and that teams should develop their own questions based on the context of their projects.

Tool 4: Ideation Stage

If there is a need for the team to reflect during ideation, the questions below can aid in the reflection. Please note that in the table below we make a distinction between regular reflection questions and questions that have ethical implications. Also, note that these are mere examples of questions one could ask and that teams should develop their own questions based on the context of their projects.

Tool 5: Prototyping Stage

If there is a need for the team to reflect when they are developing prototypes, the questions below can aid in the reflection. Please note that in the table below we make a distinction between regular reflection questions and questions that have ethical implications. Also, note that these are mere examples of questions one could ask and that teams should develop their own questions based on the context of their projects.

Tool 6: Testing Stage

Testing often brings up issues of ethics. Who should we test with? How do we conduct the test? Double blind tests or single blind? etc. Please note that in the table below we make a distinction between regular reflection questions and questions that have ethical implications. Also, note that these are mere examples of questions one could ask and that teams should develop their own questions based on the context of their projects.

Tool 7 Scaling Stage

New technology typically helps users increase their human capacities by (a) providing them the ability to accomplish something they were never able to do before, or (b) being able do a task they were able to accomplish before but more efficiently or effectively. When multiple users are able to use technologies in such a way that it creates a network effect where large groups of people and, often times, the whole society can benefit. However, when technology inherently has intended/unintended consequences that are undesirable, the network effects multiply (and hurt groups of people or society as a whole) with scale and firms need to develop safeguards to prevent the negative effects from scaling. This path is often difficult, inconvenient, less profitable in the short run (but we would argue more profitable in the long run) and may even lead to slower growth, but it is the right thing to do. The questions below will help teams frame “how might we” questions that balance ethics and the need to scale. So, we strongly reccomend that all products regardless of context should consider some or all of the questions below. We also reccomend that you develop other context-relevant questions too.

TOOL 8: Pivoting

Pivoting is often necessary for products and especially for start-ups. Due diligence should be done when pivoting the product. Therefore, please consider the following questions as you pivot. Facebook and similar platforms that use users/user data as products that went from a place to create "community" to a broadcasting platform (with none of the regulations applied to other broadcast media applying to them) and the effect they have had on usurping democracy are a cautionary tale here. Please note that in the table below we make a distinction between regular reflection questions and questions that have ethical implications. Also, note that these are mere examples of questions one could ask and that teams should develop their own questions based on the context of their projects.

REFERENCES

Liedtka, Jeanne. "Perspective: Linking design thinking with innovation outcomes through cognitive bias reduction." Journal of product innovation management 32.6 (2015): 925-938.

Schön, Donald (2017), The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. Routledge.

Seidel, Victor P., and Sebastian K. Fixson. "Adopting design thinking in novice multidisciplinary teams: The application and limits of design methods and reflexive practices." Journal of Product Innovation Management 30 (2013): 19-33.