Interesting thread.
I would say that I’ve worked in 3 different organizations: design as art, inertial and sales-driven. Here are my definitions:
design as art: the company has a small commodity market cornered which financed the owner to do some designs regardless of sales and profitability.
Inertial: the company is the biggest in their very small industry. Shear inertia mantains sales as no one in the industry is coming out with new product, nor flooding the market with sales people or ads. It helps that this industry is sheltered from international competition (by its small size and geographically compact area) and it would be destroyed within months if it were exposed.
Sales driven: Sell whatever you got. The sale part is so important that I joke that it is speed to PO instead of speed to market.
The thing I like most about the sales driven organization is that you get a lot of different designs into the market and you get a lot of sales data back about what works and what doesn’t. The difficult part is that no one is researching or looking far ahead. NPD decisions come down to personal preference and seem random. Brand building and quality take a back seat. Ironically, some products that would likely succeed at a higher price point (because they have an enormous value, but a small potential market) fail because they are sold at a lower price.
As for changing these organizations…I don’t think it’s possible. Some of them are resilient. They will face a limit to growth, but if they are privately held, that may not be a problem.