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Irving Wladawsky wrote recently about his work at the Design London center, which is a think tank for innovative creation:

In early June, Imperial College and the Royal College of Art announced the creation of a new center - Design-London - to bring together the disciplines of design, engineering, technology and business to address jointly the challenges of innovation in an increasingly global, competitive economy.

One of his comments on this project really caught my eye–his discussion of design as being a combination of synthesis, style and humanity.  That last is particularly important, as it recognizes the crucial aspect of emerging technologies such as enterprise 2.0 applications: if the tools are not used and adopted, you have failed to recognize in your design the role of humanity.  Adoption is the key differentiator between successful and failed social media:

As I thought more about all this, I realized that design and creativity bring three critical attributes to technology and business innovation:  synthesis, that is, a holistic, systems approach to problem solving and solutions creation; style, which I think of as embodying a particular model or point of view in the organization and its work; and humanity, which reminds us all that whatever is being developed - products, services, organizations, business processes - has to appeal to people - customers, as well as employees, partners and everyone else involved in the innovation ecosystem.

On the other hand, a successful application can open up complex organizations and systems to enable rapid knowledge sharing and communication, thus creating the sort of mind-meld necessary for innovation.