Design Performance: Design ScoreBOARD

Over the last 10 years, many manufacturing activities have slowly relocated overseas, in the main to lower cost economics. It has been a long term belief that the innovative and design activities will remain a core strength in the UK. However, there is growing evidence that many emerging economics are now focusing attention on design and inovation. Not content with being suppliers of cheap, low-skilled labour to the orld, many countries such as China, Korea, India, Singapore and Taiwan have been investing heavily in their science and technology base. And now these countries are too starting to realise that they also need to develop their design capabilities. China and Korea are putting huge amounts of effort into building indigenous design capability. And its not just the developing countries - many other countries - both emerging economies and long established industrialised nations are doing the same.

The UK must act fast at national level to put in place a strategy and objectives - and at the company level to stimulate the recognition of the importance of investment in design. Unfortunately, many companies do not recognise the importance of design for their business. A survey of British design businesses (Design Council 2005) suggested that only 52% of their clients valued design highly and in Scotland this figure was even lower, just 39%.

The importance of design performance in the 21st Century cannot be overstated. However, a key barrier to understanding the importance of design, the location of design activity and the role of design in the UK economy is reliable data on the design sector. There is a need for further work to effectively understand the value of design for both a firm and also a region or nation. The landmark studies carried out in the UK are now over 10 years old and perceptions of design have changed in that time. It is also clear that careful attention needs to be placed on the design of such a study to ensure that methodological concerns are carefully controlled.

This research proposal is one important 'lever' to enhanced design performances; the proposal is for a 'Design Scoreboard' that can be used to understand the relative position of a region of nation in its design capabilities, design utilisation and design orientation.