Developing models for successful upscaled upcycling of fashion
One of the key challenges facing the textile industry is how to successfully upscale the systems from micro pioneers to commercial textile upcycling. Models have been developed to act as frameworks. Disseminating this information to young designers, these have then been tested to see if appropriate techniques can be refined and protoypes developed for upscaling upycling.
At one level, this paper may be regarded as an exercise in comparative industrial organisation. We are primarily interested in accounting for the highly successful performance of Japanese manufacturing firms in the innovation process. In pursuing this goal, however, it will be necessary to ‘unpack’, and to examine critically, some intellectual baggage that has strongly shaped and influenced the approach to innovative activity in the recent past. To the extent that our approach is convincing, it suggests a reordering of focus and emphasis in the study of innovation.