Enhancing Footwear Industry Competitiveness through Innovation-Oriented Design Thinking

This study enhances Ethiopia's footwear industry competitiveness through innovative design thinking that integrates customer voice with technical design priorities. It investigates key customer criteria in footwear purchasing and prioritizes design requirements to improve product quality and market responsiveness. Using Pareto analysis and the House of Quality (HoQ) framework, supported by Wondershare EdrawMax for visualization, the research identifies influential customer preferences and translates them into actionable design strategies. The findings emphasize customer-centric design, highlighting comfort, fitness, and durability as core satisfaction drivers. The study proposes a novel innovation-driven design framework—termed Innovation Design Thinking (IDT)—which synthesizes Design Thinking, Quality Function Deployment (QFD), and innovation principles, including commercialization. This approach offers strategic guidance for manufacturers on resource allocation and competitive product development while contributing to academic discourse by clarifying intersections between empathy-driven design, technical precision, and innovation outcomes in footwear. Keywords: Footwear, Innovation Design Thinking, Voice of Customers, House of Quality, Competitiveness, Commercialization