Foreword by Michael Bichard
The Design for Growth summit saw leaders in design, business, policy and education come together to discuss measures to stimulate growth and renewal in the economy.
The summit followed in the wake of the Chancellor’s Budget for Growth that aimed to encourage the production of world-leading products and services that are “Made in Britain, created in Britain, designed in Britain, invented in Britain”.
The objective of the day was to ensure that the potential of design to generate sustainable growth can be fully realised. Speakers and delegates addressed three themes – manufacturing, the built environment and public procurement – to demonstrate how this could happen.
On a practical level, design plays different roles in the industry sectors discussed. But from a holistic perspective, design can drive growth and innovation. By helping produce products, services and places that focus on the needs of the user, it is the link between the drawing board (or the laboratory) and the marketplace.
Design can’t function in a vacuum and is nothing without an opportunity and scalable business model. Government – at a national and local level – has an important role to play in creating the conditions by which design can be used more effectively. But the onus is also on business to make better use of design, and for practitioners of design to make sure they are supplying the right solutions.
There are challenges ahead, and these are the conversations we held to address them.
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THE GROWTH AGENDA
What is the role of design in generating sustainable growth?
“If this is just another design conference then we will have failed.” So said Michael Bichard as he opened the Growth Agenda session at the Design for Growth Summit. “This is not a therapy group, or even a debating forum to discuss theory,” he continued. “It is the start of a conversation about how designers, industry and government can use design to kick-start the UK economy.”
While Lord Bichard claims he is “not a designer”, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) CEO Dr Ralf Speth is certainly closer.
Dr Speth, who has spent decades in automotive engineering, referred to one of Lord Bichard’s rules of design: “If you think design is expensive, you should look at the cost of bad design.” This was to become the summit’s most tweeted quote.
JLR is pouring money into design in the UK, creating jobs for companies across the country. The automotive power train market alone is expected to grow from £200bn to £500bn in the next few years and the UK can be at the forefront of this. Sure, emerging markets are strong, but the speed at which technology is moving can play to the UK’s advantage – there is no place to hide for badly designed products.
With the right innovation, and a focus on designing services as well as products, there is no reason why firms in the UK automotive sector can’t take advantage of a market in, say, China that is growing at 45% a year.
Government has to play its part too. “If the coalition promotes the right economic structure, we can deliver the growth,” Dr Speth concluded.
Fortunately, David Willetts MP, Minister of State for Universities and Science, agrees. His intention is for the public sector to use, and nurture, good design, and the government’s research and innovation strategy to have design at its heart.
“Design forms an integral part of the government’s plans for innovation and growth and our upcoming research and innovation strategy will have design at its heart,” he said.
“Good design can help business to thrive and improve public services,” Willetts added.
“With over 230,000 people employed in our design industry it makes a significant contribution to our economic wealth with £15 billion spent on UK design in 2009.”
One of the best modern-day examples of design as a growth driver is tech giant Apple. In the late 1990s, Apple was losing money – not just millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars – it was losing billions. Now it is one of the world’s most successful and wealthy companies, posting Q1 net profits of around US$6billion in January – and design has been critical to this turnaround.
The firm’s Senior Vice President of Industrial Design Jonathan Ive took part in the Design for Growth summit and shared his thoughts on what Apple had learnt about design-driven growth.
Ive was keen to stress that Apple’s primary goal is not to make money. Instead, the tech giant simply tries to make the best products it can.
At Apple, that means allowing space to fail rather than strangling an idea by giving it a revenue target before it has left the drawing board. Ive described the level of detail that Apple dedicates to a product’s development from every corner of the company, and the importance of keeping focused – throwing out perfectly good ideas that aren’t quite right at that time and place, and rejecting anything that even hints at compromise (even if that means going back to square one).
Design has been key to Apple’s success because it has designed excellence into the product, believes Martin Temple, chair of the Design Council. It has a designer, Ive, on its executive team, so the core management team can evaluate ideas that aren’t immediately easy to quantify. Something that initially feels like an emotive and intangible concept may one day be at the heart of a multi-billion dollar product. A designer can see this.
“Ideas are ultimately very powerful,” according to Ive, “but fragile in their development.” It is designers who can protect and nurture them through to the finished product.
THE SESSION’S TOP TWEETS…
- @lixindex Lucy Kimbell – Design is shiny objects or is it user experience. Or is it disruptive change that leads to sustainable, fair value?#designsummit11
- @williamknight2 William Knight – commitment from David Willetts for HMG to use #designsummit11 to feed into innovation & research strategy. More summits to follow too!
- @JocelynABailey Jocelyn Bailey – Willetts says design will be at heart of innovation strategy coming in the autumn #designsummit11
CONTINUING THE CONVERSATION…
- How can we encourage people to look at the cost of bad design? How can the UK best take advantage of emerging markets before they become ‘emerged’?
- Design education should focus on the decision-makers as their focus on the bottom line can miss the potential of an idea that a designer can identify.
- Can we teach senior decision makers without a design background to spot the potential of ideas without an obvious revenue stream? Could design be included in business coaching for growth? How can we ensure more designers get on the boards of big companies?
MANUFACTURING: VALUING DESIGN AND INNOVATION?
How can design grow Britain’s advanced manufacturing base, commercialise technology and exploit our competitive advantages?
That was the question at the heart of the Summit’s discussion chaired by Sir Martin Temple.
Britain can’t compete with developing nations on price, so it has to compete on creativity. Luckily, the UK is good at innovation. Ranked 12th on the World Economic Forum competitiveness index, it also has a world class science base and a great design industry.
There are now almost a quarter of a million designers working in the UK – an increase of 29% over the last five years – and the industry has a turnover of around £15 billion per annum.
Designs only make the difficult journey from the drawing board (or lab) to commercial success if they give the customer what they really want. Or, if you’re Gerry McGovern and Ian Callum, design directors of Land Rover and Jaguar, the designs “deliver desirability”.
Describing the development of his latest “baby” – the new Range Rover Evoque – McGovern emphasized that design was absolutely core to the process – creating a vehicle which adhered to four key elements of Land Rover’s design ideals: functionality, sustainability, desirability and luxury.
Ian Callum put design at the centre of the Jaguar C-X75 electric supercar concept, too. Powered by a foot-long electric jet engine and stuffed full of design concepts and technology that are as futuristic as befits a vehicle designed for the next age of automotive travel, the C-X75 is designed to appeal to that great intangible of design: emotional connection.
Both men are bullish about JLR’s success and put design at the core of the firm’s growth because, like Apple it is committed to design being in the board room.
But what if you don’t have the clout of JLR or Apple? How do the great ideas survive their “fragile” evolution?
Chris Saunders runs Navetas, a company that makes innovative smart meters. He spent six years working with a team at Oxford University to create a product that did what he wanted, but getting it to the next stage required mentoring, support and design expertise.
Saunders believes that small manufactures struggle to cross the bridge between design and technology. The laboratory can turn an idea into a working industrial design. But only with creative design will that idea find a way into a consumers’ consciousness – in Navetas’ case morphing complex data sets into an innovative user-friendly interface shows exactly which appliances are using what power and when – allowing users to make major savings on
energy bills.
Now it has been nurtured and mentored across the divide, Navetas is part of the market place responding to the government’s plan to invest £11 billion in smart meters by 2019 and is doing business with the likes of British Gas, E-ON, EDF and Intel.
Government support is the final piece in the puzzle. Luckily, Minister of State for Business and Enterprise Mark Prisk MP is on the case. The Design Council’s ‘Designing Demand’ programme has secured support from BIS and is part of government’s investment in business support for smaller firms.
It couldn’t come at a better time. Saunders recounts a meeting with an (unnamed) bank in Navetas’ early days. “The manager said he was delighted to offer us a loan of £750,000,” says Saunders, “but only if we deposited £750,000 in a bond account. We declined.”
Prisk is also looking at ways to use intellectual property to encourage reward. “Could the UK have an ‘IP Czar’, like in the US?”, one Design for Growth Summit delegate asked?
The idea is an intriguing one.
THE SESSION’S TOP TWEETS…
- @clivegrinyer Clive Grinyer – It’s nice to be talking about design and manufacturing again, it was looked down on in my day. Thanks Design Council #designsummit11
- @WiredUK Wired UK – Echoing Jony Ive, Ian Callum, Jaguar Design Director: Don’t underestimate the importance of the intangible in design.
- @BusinessLinkGov Business Link – #designsummit11 Prisk “Innovation is collaborative”. How to create innovation in your business: bit.ly/fSzeyy
CONTINUING THE CONVERSATION…
- Will design be integral to the technology innovation centres? The government says “yes”, but what form will this take?
- Is the UK’s ageing population a design opportunity?
- Should the UK have an intellectual property ‘czar’?
- How can we better incentivise young designers when, say, they could go and earn six-figure salaries creating algorithms for hedge funds? What lessons can be learned about promoting the value of design, rather than simply the cost?
- Education needs a new idea. Surely new centres of excellence for different design disciplines would be more productive than ‘salami slicing’ the education budget?
- And how should we be encouraging more positive media coverage about design and manufacturing?
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT: FOUNDATIONS FOR GROWTH?
How can we use good design to create great places for renewal and growth?
There is significant political will to unleash economic and social potential across Britain through regeneration. A well-planned and high quality built environment stimulates growth and the job market making a positive difference to communities and people’s lives.
So, nearly 100 days on from the Commission for the Built Environment’s (CABE) merger with the Design Council, former CABE chairman and current World Architecture Festival programme director Paul Finch used the Design for Growth Summit to declare the union was “an historic moment”.
“Finally”, he declared, “the silos between architecture and other forms of design can come down.”
When it comes to public building programmes, particularly infrastructure, Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) have dominated the market for over a decade. Once heralded as a solution to infrastructure procurement, PFI’s star has been steadily on the wane since the collapse of the Metronet project four years ago.
Delays and overspends have grabbed the headlines, but architect Jim Eyre – from award-winning practice Wilkinson Eyre – is more severe in his criticism, describing the preference for PFI schemes to scrimp on design as “dangerous”.
“Cost is not the same as value,” he said, “and if you cut too many corners in times of financial pressure, you can risk sabotaging your design’s value altogether.
“Good things in the public realm are not happy accidents – they are achieved by design.”
Wilkinson Eyre designed the now iconic Millennium Bridge in Gateshead. The project could have cost “half as much” if those commissioning it had simply wanted a basic bridge complete with “mugger-friendly sodium lighting”, Eyre admits. But that wouldn’t have attracted the admiration and critical acclaim from media and opinion formers and attracted new-found flocks of tourists and businesses to an otherwise un-loved stretch of Gateshead’s waterside.
The bridge has played a key part in the revival of what was a run-down area of industrial urban wasteland, restoring economic growth, and boosting a true intangible: civic pride.
Design and innovation in architecture doesn’t necessarily mean doubling the cost either. Wilkinson Eyre’s 2012 Olympic Basketball structure shows how budget constraints and other impositions can lead to temporary pieces of architecture that come in on time and budget.
Reusable buildings are certainly a major interest for architect, designer and TV presenter Kevin McCloud. His HAB company builds sustainable, low-cost housing projects
that engage local communities through “a process of consultation and refinement.”
That process includes education too. “Environmentally-friendly homes don’t do their job if people open the windows and turn up the heating,” McCloud explains. “Residents have to play their part too.”
McCloud also emphasises that sustainable architecture isn’t merely about houses, but the spaces between them, a theme embraced on a far bigger scale by Olympic architecture mastermind Andrew Altman.
The 2012 Olympic Village is like a microcosm of London’s diverse range of housing stock, with small and tall, dense and well-spaced architecture.
London’s “unrivalled incorporation” of green spaces and waterways informed the design philosophy of the Olympics by using design to tap into the positive facets of its host environment, the Olympic Village will “change the mental map of London”, Altman believes. For the first time, people who have previously got no further east than the tourist attractions of London Bridge will see the east as a viable destination.
Like McCloud’s housing projects and Eyre’s bridge, this is a new kind of regeneration, one delivered in an incremental and cumulative way. Design expertise and support is a pre-condition to deliver quality outcomes and the government acknowledges that it has a crucial role to play in these radical changes.
Now the ball is rolling, all parties – political and otherwise, must ensure that design is delivered through the new planning system. Designing places in which people choose to live and work, companies choose to locate and which are resilient to environmental and economic change, is at the heart of the growth agenda.
THE SESSION’S TOP TWEETS…
- @iamkatejones Kate Jones – “We are all consumers of the built environment and we are all experts in our experiences of place” Paul Finch #designsummit11
- @tmsophie Sophie Thomas – Jim Eyre steps up to the podium and talks of the power of design collaboration to create legacy in our cities #designsummit11
- @RachelAFisher RachelAFisher – #designsummit11 Kevin McCloud design provides continuing improvement – another plea to keep designers involved throughout the process.
CONTINUING THE CONVERSATION…
- Growth needs leadership from government, but how do we ensure government buy-in? How do we establish the centres of excellence and then make them recognisable destinations?
- Are there government – and local government – incentives that can be brought in to speed up the process of opening a new business? Are there ways of bringing cohesion between the various central and local government departments that have a bearing on new developments and designs?
- How do we ensure sustainable developments hold their own against low-cost, short-term developments, and how do we use civic leadership to drive growth outside London?
- Value is a client’s position, not a supplier’s. How do designers fix the fracture between the deliverable and the beautiful – between the people making products and the people responsible for buildings – to give clients genuine choices?
PROCUREMENT: GOVERNMENT AS A DESIGN LEADER?
How can design drive innovation in the public sector?
According to Sir John Sorrell “procurement” has always been viewed as a something of a dirty word.
Because the vast sum the government spends each year on procurement – around £236bn – makes the term more palatable (perhaps “commissioning” might be better, a delegate suggested), the fact remains that the government is or should be – a design leader.
But it doesn’t always behave like one. Civil servants are, if not by nature then certainly by training, cautious. Rarely in the history of government procurement has anyone given civil servants a license to innovate, be creative and to accept a degree of risk.
Without creativity though, public sector services are unlikely to achieve their ultimate goal: to enhance the lives of citizens and improve the global perception of the UK. There are exceptions though, and in some unlikely places too.
The NHS faces many challenges to innovation. A preference for traditional products and low costs, combined with the organisation’s sheer size, has often stifled a desire for change.
But in recent years the NHS has found itself struggling to contain a new threat — healthcare associated infections (HCAI). As well as the human cost (it is estimated that 5,000 people die each year from infections such as MRSA), dealing with them costs the NHS around £1bn a year.
So two and a half years ago, the NHS teamed up with the Design Council to create the ‘Design Bugs Out’ programme which brought together designers, manufacturers and front-line healthcare staff to develop innovative new designs for hospital products which help reduce cross-infection.
Bristol Maid was one of the SMEs involved and its operations director Bryn Jones told the Design for Growth Summit why this procurement method worked so well: clear channels of communication and an incentive to innovate.
For years, small suppliers to the NHS have found their good ideas only make it as far as one hospital – and in some cases, just one ward.
But by giving an SME access to people from across the NHS, a clear brief on a problem that needed solving, and the financial support to develop ideas, the NHS found a relatively cheap answer to a very expensive problem. Bristol Maid doubled its profits too, which proves an important point raised by London Borough of Lewisham CEO Barry Quirk: without a sustainable business model, you just have good ideas.
Sustainable business models aren’t maintained by buying the cheapest service out there either. Quirk’s message to the public sector is that the wholesale aggregation of public sector procurement can stifle innovation and fail to deliver services that actually make people’s lives better. Good services and competition don’t just mean “a race to the bottom”.
This is a difficult gospel to preach amid the scramble for savings – £5bn needed in 2010/11 alone – when local Councils and other public bodies are being encouraged to make use of economies of scale via joint purchase.
But, argues Quirk, the companies that build our schools have very different capabilities to the ones who provide care for the elderly. So why, he and some public sector bodies are starting to ask, would you procure these services en masse? Especially when good public procurement should look for user-centred public services as well as value for money.
For the public sector and local government in particular, the real barriers to smart procurement start at the ballot box. Innovation requires fast and adaptive learning from the inevitable mistakes that happen when new things are tried. Mistakes can become overly politicised, so it’s little wonder public managers are so risk-averse.
But going for the safest – or cheapest – option simply reduces the number of suppliers prepared to go for contracts, and there is nothing like a monopoly to stifle innovation.
In the Growth Review, the government made clear its intention to work with more small firms. Its ambition is to conduct at least 25% of its business with SMEs. However, an estimated three-quarters of small businesses rarely or never bid for government contracts, and the same proportion claim to be in the dark about potential public sector work.
The state of affairs is one of constant exasperation to Lord Bichard:
“ In some areas the big players have been coming up with the same tired solutions for years, but they keep winning the work because no one else has the resources to pitch.”
One Design for Growth delegate provided a live example. “Most small design companies never get near government procurement because they simply can’t fill in the forms,” he observed.
Global design firm IDEO has been pioneering new ways around the problem. Now on its sixth project with the US administration since President Barack Obama’s election, IDEO’s Design Director Tom Hulme described how their successful work with government boils down to three things.
First, you need the right question – the design problem and the brief. Governments are huge, complex organisations, and finding the right people to explain what’s needed is extremely difficult. The end user couldn’t care less about government silos – they just want a good service – so governments have to be “citizen centred”.
Secondly, you have to see things from the perspective of the citizen. Is the foreign worker registration building in Singapore a welcoming place with logical signage? It is since IDEO filmed a citizen’s-eye journey through it, giving the department a revealing new perspective on its service and spurring it into commissioning a total redesign.
Were US online tax forms easy to use a year ago? No, because it tried a one-size-fits-all that fitted no-one instead of thinking about how people actually used it. Instigating this change needs Tom’s third solution: “govern in Beta”. Try things on a small scale with real users and be prepared for things to change, evolve or fail completely – but fail cheaply and quickly – before you arrive at the best solution.
“If a public body has that at its heart, what used to take six years can be done in six weeks,” he said.
THE SESSION’S TOP TWEETS…
- @cmhendrickson Christine – “The right questions for governments to ask are centered on the citizen.” @thulme #designsummit11
- @designcouncil – Is failure too politicised? Is it a mistake? Or a learning point? Design is about learning & improving #designsummit11
CONTINUING THE CONVERSATION…
- When government buys buildings, it buys design and the design goes out to tender. But when it buys IT services and devices, it creates written specifications and they go out to tender. How can we convince government not to buy to written specifications, which can be misinterpreted and lead to late changes, and consider buying design?
- Outside of IT, local and central government departments have a tendency to over-specify. How can we reduce this and give more space for the service provider? And how can procurement be streamlined so different levels of local government aren’t duplicating the procurement process?
- The NHS has been accused of being ‘rotten at diffusion and adoption’. There is, for example, no ‘standard’ ambulance, as every local area health authority commissions a different ambulance. How can we ensure great product design and good environmental design in one area is adopted in other areas?
- Should we change the way we view failure? As well as making failure less politicised within local government, how can we show school children that the progress of learning and re-learning is more important than passing or failing as you go along?
- How can we design the procurement process at both local and national level to open avenues for the small, creative businesses that, at the moment, feel they’re shut out of the game?
- How do we go beyond just the lip service of citizen-centredness and actually look at how organisations – particularly service organisations – work?
DESIGN FOR GROWTH: UK’S FUTURE COMPETIVENESS?
How can we invest in design for growth?
Investing in design for growth starts from one place, according to entrepreneur and angel investor Sherry Coutu.
“ You find a problem worth solving and build a team with a range of skills.”
Building that team is often simply a question of geography. London’s East End currently has around 500 start-ups, many of them tech firms. These firms will have a high turnover of staff (start-ups always do) but the employees will be more likely to stay in the same area if jobs keep coming up (which they inevitably will). That means a rapid exchange of ideas and, in turn, a fast build up of skills and experiences.
Much like in hotspots like Silicon Valley, the concentration of entrepreneurial businesses makes it more likely that the founders – the people with the ‘big ideas’ – will also come into contact with each other. That sparks knowledge sharing from top to bottom. Harness this in, say, an innovation centre on the site of the Olympic Village once the 2012 games are over, and you have an incredible force of innovation, believes Coutu.
As TechCrunch’s top CEO mentor in Europe and one of Wired’s top 10 investors in Europe, Coutu knows this isn’t a problem you can just throw money at. Just 14% of the 40 fastest growing companies in the US are backed by venture capitalists.
Similarly, Reshma Sohoni, from micro seed investment fund and mentoring programme Seedcamp, understands the mechanics of taking the “fragile” idea and nurturing it. Chris Saunders’ Navetas took incredibly complex data and turned it into something consumers could use, and for Sohoni, this is good innovation. “The successful companies use design to make technical expertise fit the best consumer experience,” she explained.
Sohoni also agrees with the idea of building design ecosystems, if possible using hubs across the UK, and this is one of her demands of the UK government.
Her other recommendations include improving access to overseas employees to plug skills gaps, and making government bodies buy more from start-ups.
“Every pound invested in a British company by the government could become £10 if the public sector bought from it,” she explained. “There are amazing products sold in the private sector that deliver fantastic ROI. It’s not right that government doesn’t enjoy them too. If a company really is too small for a public body to buy from, then the public body should at least be encouraging its suppliers to buy from it.”
THE SESSION’S TOP TWEETS…
- @BusinessLinkGov – #designsummit11 Find out how sustainable design can help you make efficient changes to your business: bit.ly/l4wk7t
- @designcouncil – Design is every hour of every day in London. But we need markers of achievement to start growth #designsummit11
CONTINUING THE CONVERSATION…
- How can we make governments buy more from SMEs? How can we stimulate growth outside the south, bringing innovation ecosystems to depressed areas in the north of England?
- How do we make it easier for us to plug skills gaps with overseas workers? How do we make governments better at investing in start-ups and particularly, buying from start-ups?
NEXT STEPS
RESEARCH & INNOVATION STRATEGY
The Design for Growth Summit has opened a debate on the role of design for economic renewal. Specifically it has highlighted issues related to manufacturing, commercialising technology, and the built environment. It has highlighted the leadership role for government including policy routes such as the stimulation of innovation through procurement.
The government has committed to placing a priority on design within the BIS Research & Innovation Strategy. The Design Council will work with industry and government to turn policy direction into practical actions that build on existing strengths. A Design Council report on design for innovation and growth will be developed over the summer and autumn for discussion at the post-Summit forum November. If you would like to register your interest for the forum please contact designforgrowth@designcouncil.org.uk
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