ABSTRACT Phrases such as globalization, global warming, the borderless world, personal computer and the Internet have all entered the vocabulary. These words reflect the issues that individuals, societies and nations face today. The products industries will remain innovative in the current era of innovation and strive to produce goods and process products by handling their innovations correctly in order to succeed and stay profitable. In addition, products industries were also blamed for not having embraced product design attitude to boost business performance, while it is viewed as an integral part of process innovation. In the industrial sector where technological fluctuations are experienced intensively, it is important how companies make use of these fluctuations and how effective the innovative decisions that they take strategically. Hence, the main objective of this study is to test the mediating effect of design management on the relationship between process innovation and business performance of product industries. The categories of analysis emerged in the study themes, as well as the techniques adopted to measure the relationships between innovation and private company performance. A key theoretical contribution of this article is in identifying the research corpus on the relationship between innovation and performance in private companies. The practical contribution of this study lies in offering evidence produced by studies that can help decision making regarding the creation of strategies and policies focused on competitiveness.