The Cox Review of Creativity in Business, published in late 2005, identified the need for the UK to exploit its creative capabilities more fully in order to respond to the growing competitive threat from rapidly emerging economies.
As part of the process to develop and implement the review’s recommendations, a delegation of academics, officials and policy makers visited universities and design firms in California, Illinois and Massachusetts.
The review put forward several recommendations promoting multi-disciplinarity in higher education as a driver of innovation. These included better preparing students ‘to work with, and understand other specialists’, and ‘the establishment of centres of excellence for multi-disciplinary courses that combine management studies, engineering and technology with design and the creative arts’.
The purpose of the visit to the US was to find examples of design-related multi-disciplinary education and practice, and assess their relevance and adaptability to a UK context. This report brings together some of the key insights that were gained from the visits.