Veolia Water Technologies Italia S.p.A. is the Italian branch of Veolia Environment, a multinational Group active in the energy, water and waste management sectors. The Italian branch is mainly focused on the water management and reuse, and within the Company the operative headquarter of Zoppola (PN), that is the “Solutions Division”, is specialized in design and production of plug and play plants and machines for treating waste water. The idea to design the new units using the Quality Function Deployment techniques came from a top management commitment in order to innovate the way to think, design and realize the new products. With the same aim, a new organization has been created consequently to support this new process: a bottom-up driven structure that works in team and in a multidisciplinary way. The application of the Quality Function Deployment has enabled to introduce, even in a small-medium size company, the different idea and the different points of view coming from the customer’s needs already in the first phases of the definition of the concept idea. Then the management of these evidences in a scientific and proven way, and through a lean and multidisciplinary organization, has helped to realize an innovative and high competitive product design already from the very first phases of its market launch. A type of product that can meet the customer’s expectations, even the ones that are not yet recognized by themselves. To concentrate the efforts and the resources on a real case, the company has identified in the new RVN 3 evaporator the trailblazer of this new way to design. The article shows the advantages of QFD methodology to develope design-driven innovation through a multi-disciplinary approach in design. The design group has been directed by Giuseppe Mincolelli, that is not a specialist in the field of evaporators, who menthored all the specialized engineers involved in the project .