Peter Kageyama, recent visitor to CIDA from Sextant Marketing Group, Tampa Bay, Florida has recently performed a specialist commentary on WUSF Radio. Below is the transcript.
When I say "design" most of us think of arts and crafts or the cut of our shirt. When I say "design school" most of us think of goateed, Birkenstock wearing hippies, drawing and painting. If you think Design schools are not a "serious" program like business school or engineering school, think again.
Management guru Tom Peters, 9/11 memorial architect Daniel Libeskind, tech industry icon Steve Jobs, Procter & Gamble , Ford, GM and Target all agree the key ingredient for global competitive advantage today is Design.
The sophistication of today's consumers and the increasing importance of effective design in their daily experience – from our homes and communities to the products and services we buy - has driven home the fact that good design is now a fundamental ingredient of successful business.
Design differentiates. Design inspires. Design gives meaning to places, products and people. Most importantly, design adds value.
And our global competitors are taking note as well.
24 years ago China opened its first design school. Today it has over 400 design programs and will graduate 10,000 industrial designers this year, up from 1500 just 5 years ago. Design firms are sprouting in major cities throughout the country and Beijing has introduced into the national curriculum a new course called Technology and Design in which students learn about the history of design and what constitutes good design.
Yet American design schools are the envy of the world and rightly so. Today's design schools are producing incredible talent – from industrial, environmental, and landscape design , to computer, game and simulation designers, today's design students may be bohemians, but they get hired like rocket scientists. And design schools are becoming hotbeds of innovation for business as well as education.
Stanford, home of a world renowned "business school" is raising $35 m to launch its "D school" a design institute that it says will rival its world famous "B school" They plan to teach design thinking with Faculty from the business school, engineering, social sciences and the arts all working together.
This year celebrates the 75th Annversary of the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota. In our own backyard, we have a world class institution which rightly should be thought of as the MIT of Tampa Bay. Other excellent design programs dot the landscape here as well and need to also be given the credit and regard they deserve, as producers of exceptional 21st century talent.
On a national level we have recognized the growing gaps in the number of engineers we are producing in the US versus the rest of the world. While we count the engineers, we would be wise to count the number of designers as well.
Design can transform cheap, everyday goods into status products. It can transform a city from post-industrial wasteland to chic downtown address and can change companies from cheap, me too competitors, to world beaters.
Design is not just the PRETTY, it is at the heart and the center of global competitiveness.
Design Schools and our Community