The conversation in the business world is buzzing about the power of design in innovation, customer experiences, and service and product delivery. The worldwide brand company, Interbrand, reports that companies who seem to get it include, Ebay, HSBC, Samsung, and Apple--who've managed to increase their brand value through innovation and design. The companies losing brand equity include, Sony, Morgan Stanley, Volkswagen (who missed the tie-in with Apple's iPod, by not including this as a standard feature in their cool VW Bugs), Levi's, and Hewlett-Packard.
You can see the latest information in August 1, 2005 Business Week.
Hi Kerry. Welcome to the Blogesphere! ;-)
ReplyDeleteI agree that design today seems -- at least on the surface -- to be the new, hot concept. This COULD be the beginning of a new design renaissance or it could be the beginning of a new design dark ages!
We could be headed for the type of place that the architecture and now industrial design industries now enjoy or we could be headed for the place that photographers and illustrators currently languish in.
A lot of it is up to us. In my podcast conversations, one thing that becomes abundently clear is that we designers are going to have to add to and grow our skills in order to compete for positions at the top of the new design hierarchy.
Our business skills need to improve. Our management skills need to improve and we need to build and adopt more adaptable and formalized creative problem-solving skills.
This is easier said than done because designers HATE change. Unfortunately, change will be inevitable for us, and I truly believe that the design field of 10 years from now will be VERY different than the design field of today or yesterday.
Chris
thePreparedMind.com
This COULD be the beginning of a new design renaissance or it could be the beginning of a new design dark ages!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, Chris.
I believe it will be a bit of both. It is an excellent opportunity for companies to value design like never before. But there is enough confusion about best business practices to create the atmosphere for design as a commodity, and the expectation of desgin as commodity. And the expectation, I am afraid, will come more from us as designers.