Design for growth from Design Council on Vimeo.
Most people understand that design plays a big part in our everyday life. It shapes the world we live. It leads to the products we use and helps create the services we use every day.
But not everyone understands the vital role design plays in economic growth - and what it can do for businesses, public services, for our manufacturing base and our built environment.
It’s fundamentally important that the way that you design and make products is absolutely core to business.
It can translate so many of those ideas into realistic commercial products.
I think people don’t use design and technology because they don’t understand it.
Jonathan Ive
In many ways it doesn't sit very comfortably in the context of business
Design for Growth
James Dyson
Well, design and technology are absolutely vital for manufacturing and vital for exporting, and it’s really, really important that we export products the world wants.
What has become apparent to me over um recent years is just the sheer scale of global competition um for manufacturing. I mean anybody now can turn out any product, what will differentiate is that unique design flare that’s built into a product, that’s what creates the value.
Design is the biggest single source of intangible investment in the UK
As a differentiator for UK manufacturing and service in global markets as something that keeps us at the cutting edge of high value added business, the twenty billion a year we spend on design in this country is a key market advantage.
Jonathan Ive
The very best business people that I know and get to work with have this wonderful understanding and familiarity with the design and creative process.
Design is actually extremely critical for the growth of the businesses we support as investors and broadly the economy as well.
Martin Temple
It helps them to maximise the sort of inherent opportunities within the business which aren’t at first apparent and that gives us the chance to be even more competitive in the world, and that’s what will sustain them going forward and that’s what will help them grow and sustain our economy.
Successful design leads of course to this tendency for good quality product to be exported. Wealth generated through export is extremely positive for the wealth of our nation.
54% of all of the jobs that have been created in the UK for the last seven years have come from 6% of companies that are that are fast growth and innovative and I’ll bet you that every single one of those guys are focused on design for the, with the customer in mind.
To get good design you need quite a lot of good things you need good architects good designers but you need good clients as well, they need to understand what design can do for them.
£44bn is spent each year on new engineering and architectural design
Jonathan Ive
It’s easy to design something that’s just different but innovation is very difficult and that I think requires that design as a function is absolutely central to business, absolutely central to the decisions that are made and I think it makes sense for design as a function, then to be part of leadership.
You’ve got so many givens in the whole process of making anything and the only real added value you’re gonna get in terms of growth of business is actually to put design into that element because that’s the intellectual value you’re putting into it.
David Frost
I don’t think up until now that design has played an important enough part for SMEs. There are clearly those businesses that have embraced it, strongly -Brompton Bicycles would be an example that everybody knows. But I think British business is waking up, um small businesses waking up, to the critical need for design to be built at very early stage of product development.
The Brompton folding bike, wholly manufactured in Brentford, sells in more than 30 countries, driving a business growth of 25% for the last three years.
Deborah Meaden
So the case for design is a convincing one - and, as a nation, we’re good at it. Design can encourage innovation, create competitive advantage - and drive growth. But we don’t use design enough. What could you do to use design better and put design right at its heart?
Sherry Coutu
Get a designer on your team and have them work with you to bring your great technological idea to delight a customer, because if you don’t have that person then you’re gonna miss it.
Terry Scuoler
Be bold and invest even when times are tough, have faith in your design process and continue to invest in it even during times of recession.
Jim Eyre
Design, it’s so vital because if you design carefully and build carefully and do beautiful things, I think people feel good about themselves.
Reshma Sohoni
Design is absolutely critical and it’s over the longevity of a business and you can see that with Apple’s history or even Google where it’s part of their ten key truths, design is number one.
Terry Scuoler
Design is a complex set of issues, you will make mistakes, learn from those mistakes, commit to that design process and continue to move on.
John Cridland
It’s the difference between customer satisfaction and customer delight - and design is one of the things that can be that differentiator.
For a design-alert business every £100 spent on design increases turnover by £225
Martin Temple
People have got to look beyond what might be their conventional perception of what design is and what it can do to look at the examples that exist where design has been shown to add real value and then try it out on your own company and your own area of influence
Thanks to
Deborah Meaden, the Gatsby Charitable Foundation and all who appeared in this film