Lynne Whelan

BA MA

Design Strategist

Design+ Technology Gateway, Dargan Centre
e: Lynne.Whelan@setu.ie | t: 059 9175329
ORCID ID: 000-0002-4199-6460

Ms Whelan is an experienced Design Strategist bringing together an SME owner/manager background with an M.A. in Design, a B.A. (Hons) in Product Design Innovation, and is a PhD candidate in Strategic Design for Innovation. Lynne has multiple International publications in the field of design in the modern business environment.

As a design strategist, she has developed a series of industry offerings, successfully advancing strategies for growth and innovation in hundreds of companies from start-ups to multinationals across all sectors. The role is to develop strategic direction in the implementation of business, product and service initiatives for industry partners. This includes the facilitation of workshops applying methodologies which act to stimulate innovation through strategic design and the designer’s toolkit.

  • Research Interests
  • Publications
  • Research Supervision
  • Engagement and Collaboration

Research Interests

Associate lecturer in strategic design, Ms Whelan has developed and delivered accredited Level 9 and Level 8 modules in Strategic Design for the Faculty of Engineering and for Lifelong Learning.

Research areas include the emergence of Technological Universities in Ireland. This was part of Masters thesis with a focus on the role of practice-oriented learning and knowledge creation.

Current research is focused on the transformational impacts of strategic design engagements on small to medium enterprises (SMEs). This has included research into measuring the success factors of strategic design engagements. The current focus is on business strategies versus operational strategies and the flow of knowledge between the two.

Research has been ongoing in the development and co design of an extensive innovation toolkit. The innovation toolkit is suitable for all organisations from all sectors whether they have an existing idea or whether they are approaching with no specific ideas for innovation yet. The toolkit has been designed as supporting material to be introduced through the Strategic Design Innovation Programme designed and facilitated by the Design+ Strategy team.

Ongoing research and development of strategic design programmes for industry, agency and government departments.

Publications

Peer Reviewed Journal Articles

Whelan L., Purcell G., Gregan J., Doyle D. (2019) “Design as a Catalyst for Innovation in Irish Industry - Evolution of the Irish Innovation Voucher Initiative within Design+ Technology Gateway” The Design Journal. Dundee: Taylor & Francis https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14606925.2019.1595860           

Whelan, L., Maher, C., Deevy, C., (2016) “Learning in practice” in Madden,    G.ed. ITERATIONS Design Research & Practice Review, Issue 3, pp 70-7 http://hdl.handle.net/10344/5993

Whelan, L., Maher, C., Deevy, C., (2016) ‘’Timeline – The foundations of Regional Technical Colleges in Ireland to the Emergence of Technological Universities’’  International Journal for Cross Disciplinary Subjects in Education (IJCDE) Vol 9, Issue 1 ISSN 3360-3367    https://infonomics-society.org/ijcdse/published-papers/volume-9-2018/

Whelan L., Maher C., Deevy C., (2017) ‘Towards a University Design School - Restoring the Value of Tacit Knowledge through Assessment’ The Design Journal 2017 https://www.tandfonline.com/action/doSearch?AllField=Whelan+Lynne&SeriesKey=rfdj20

Conference Proceedings and Papers

Whelan, L., Kiernan, L., Morrissey, K., Deloughry, N., (2021) “ Business and Product Innovation: Design for a Strategy or Strategy for a Design” 16th European Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (ECIE 2021) https://www.academic-bookshop.com/ourshop/prod_7641698-Proceedings-of-the-16th-European-Conference-on-Innovation-and-Entrepreneurship-ECIE-2021-Print-Version-2-Volumes.html

Whelan, L., Kiernan, L., Morrissey, K., Deloughry, N., (2021) “ Measuring the Success Factors of Strategic Design Implementation” IEEE Technology and Engineering Management Conference Europe 2021  17th May https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353487689_Measuring_the_success_factors_of_strategic_design_implementation   

Whelan, L., Maher, C., Deevy, C., (2016) “The Role of Practice Oriented Learning in Design and Creativity in an Irish Technological University” in: Proceedings of Ireland International Conference on Education (IICE-2016), Dublin, April, 2016    http://terezaventura.net/IICE-2016%20Proceedings.pdf  P70-75

Published Reports

Whelan, L., MA Thesis ‘Towards a Technological University: A Design Approach to Knowledge Creation’ Institute of Technology Carlow 2018
https://libsearch.itcarlow.ie/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=48504&query_desc=kw%2Cwrdl%3A%20Lynne%20Whelan

 

Research Supervision

 

Engagement and Collaboration

  • Stakeholder member of Craftscode Interreg Europe Project- Regional Innovation Policy Impacts 2020 - 2022
  • External academic representative – MA in Enterprise for Creative Industries- TUS
  • Ongoing links with industry and regional stakeholders towards building regional innovation capacity