Abstract
The collaboration with designers represents an opportunity to adopt a design approach to innovation (e.g. Burns, 2006). However, in the context of the debates around designers as external innovation consultant, research has paid little attention to what really happens when designers meet non-designers in innovation processes. We clarify and extend on this literature by drawing on the concept of enthusiasm. We present the concept of the designer as enthusiast, which is used to analyze data from an educational program with four parallel running innovation processes. Through the study it became clear that besides the influence on creativity and innovation, designers as enthusiasts influence the belief in a more open innovation approach and trust in designers as an innovation consultant only if they can demonstrate innovation competencies and may benefit from developing an understanding of innovation group’s previous experience with collaborative approaches.