Notes for Design In Business Week

Notes for Design In Business Week 27 Oct 2000

Tomorrow will be different—the future of design in business

The backdrop to my presentation is taken from the hoarding surrounding the site of the new Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. The drawings are of school children by school children. Not only do they remind me who inherits the world we make, they remind me that design is a political activity. If ever Business needed evidence of the power of design they need look no further than the school playground.

I am convinced that the future of ‘design in business’ will be a good one. But only if we invest in design research and creative education that deepens our understanding, our knowledge and our ability to control and exploit the rich opportunities presented by the ‘knowledge revolution’.

While creativity has been around since the beginning of civilisation, ‘design’, as we know it, only appeared in the 1830s. And if design’s short history tells us anything of value, it clearly demonstrates that Business must be prepared if it is to responsibly exploit the potential wealth brought about by industrial revolution. And preparation means education.

Cataclysmic technological change has occurred twice in the past 250 years.

In what many believe to be the first industrial revolution, the old creative industries broke with their craft traditions and entered the Machine Age. New schools of ‘applied art’ invented the idea of the ‘industrial designer’, who exploited technology and ensured that products were aesthetically pleasing and functional—that products were wilfully designed to stimulate new markets and satisfied customers. From the first acrid brown shoots of industrial revolution in 1760, to the foundation of the first school of industrial design, took 77 grimy years.

But by the time education had caught up with the increasing pace of industrial progress, a second revolution had arrived and its results were quite literally, electrifying. This time designers were ready to exploit scientific discoveries with brands, structural concrete, cars, cookers and Crimplene frocks while young people were educated to look forward to a lifetime’s employment in industry.

Much has changed in the 170 years since ‘design’ was invented. That tomorrow will be different goes without saying. Because of the speed of change, even today is different; we go to sleep in a different world from the one we woke up in. Three years is a very long time in the digital age.

It was the speed of this third industrial revolution that caught many of us out. But designers saw it coming when phototypesetting hit the skip and the Apple Mac replaced the drawing board. But while Britain may have written the textbook on design education, and be home to some of the finest design talent in the world, it’s our lucky history rather than our scrupulous planning that now place us in our excellent position. And we’re going to have to do an awful lot more, an awful lot more quickly if British Business is to inherit the share of the creative action that designers believe it so richly deserve.

The UK is widely acknowledged as the world’s creative capital, on par with the United States (but don’t take my work for it, read the Government’s and Design Council’s published research). However, I believe we’re living on a creative legacy that desperately needs replenishing because it’s in danger of becoming depleted:

Our school curriculum has barely changed since the last industrial revolution. School-leavers still expect to be employees rather than employers. Art, design and technical drawing are still what you do if you can’t do anything else. Creativity remains an option rather than a national obligation.

If Business is to grow through creativity then we must educate more designers to ever-higher levels of competence. Business can help designers to discover new ways of validating their work. Because if the risk associated with intuition can’t be predicted, Business will suffer.

We must educate businesses to work in partnership with designers and continue to educate designers to think of their work in business terms. Design is a great medium for transferring technology between products and services.

Design continues to add quantifiable value to Business through the creation of intellectual capital; the products and brands that are expressed as tangible assets on the balance sheet. Customers understand and expect to pay for design and the added value of having their personalities and values reflected in the products and services they choose to buy.

In the future a product, a process, a service or a building will not be defined only by its apparent form or performance but by its latent market potential. The potential size of a market will be huge, with a similar associated risk; the cost of opportunity will therefore be vast and the rewards for success bigger still. With the support of business, designers will predict and control the necessary risk associated with all innovation.

We now talk about design within the context of the ‘creative industries’, but design is much more than just another industry, it’s an integral part of almost every successful industry. Design will continue to mean different things to different people, in different industries, often becoming subsumed within the broader term ‘creativity’. Designers will increasingly reflect the inter-disciplinary working practices adopted by the new creative industries—often working in partnership with people and organisations whose values they share and whose skills are complementary to their own. Design will mutate, evolve and endure.

Just as we’ve lost our corner shops and local brands, in the future it will be increasingly difficult for brands that aren’t global to survive, likewise, the people who create them. But brand-builders and global business must look beyond market domination and the demands of shareholders and recognise the value of the new global language they’ve created.

Thankfully, these drawings show us that no one is “just Nike”, each child remains a recognisable individual and a promiscuous brand consumer. Thanks to brands we all communicate in new ways which opens up big creative opportunities and challenges for responsible designers and businesses. I believe customers are smart enough to know rubbish when they see it, hear it and feel it.

170 years ago ‘design’ was borne of ‘business’; it was created to meet the needs of industry. Today industry and design need each other as never before, so let’s spend the next three years building on our long relationship and get design further into business, business further into design and creativity into the heart of education and the British economy. Because in tomorrow’s world creativity will be our greatest natural resource, our primary industry and our richest national asset.