Design: a critical input to rural innovative entrepreneurship

Described as a mediation between people and technology, design is critical to innovative entrepreneurship but has been ignored in innovation research. The rigorous study of design has suffered from an inability to differentiate firms that approach design as ad hoc from those approaching design as a structured, creative process. This research uses newly available data from the 2022 Annual Business Survey Design Module categorizing 4 different approaches to design. These data allow us to examine the link between design and innovation with a focus on businesses in nonmetropolitan counties that challenges conventional wisdom that design is overwhelmingly an urban phenomenon.