industrial design

Investing in Industrial Design

Design does not belong to any specific economic sector. It is currently practiced in all lines of action.

The figures speak for themselves: In the Paris region, design implicates some 4000 firms with more than 30,000 employees. It generates €2.5 billion in sales. Around two-thirds of French design agencies and designers are located in the Paris region. More than 120 design bureaus in other firms are located there. Design’s economic weight is genuine and a growing number of major French corporations call upon design, following the example of Oxylane Group-Decathlon, LVMH, and Seb, automobile manufacturers, public transportation companies, and even the French electric utility.

However, design’s penetration rate in small businesses remains low. More than 60% of French firms have never called upon design and less than 20% of them deem design to be strategic. However the return on investment for firms having called upon design is less than 2 years for 60% of the projects completed (source: Design Council). Inoculating the design virus in firms, the driving force behind economic development, is therefore a major issue.

Design is too often dominated by its exclusively decorative dimension and is not yet sufficiently deemed, in economic circles, a factor in increasing productivity and competitiveness.

Nevertheless, our foreign competitors have clearly grasped this. Long ago, they integrated design as a strategic element for the firm and acknowledge designers as an indispensable link in the firm’s life on the same order as R&D, marketing, and financing.

Yet, in general, design is not associated with added value, or return on investment, or increases in productivity. Design’s appeal in the corporate world is guided by urgency and, in most cases, fulfills an isolated need that is not necessarily part of a strategic development rationale and an overall project.

Le Lieu du Design would like, with the participants in this essential sector for economic attraction, to show that design is primarily added value.

Sometimes deemed a last resort, it is far too rare for design and designers to be called upon prior to product and service conception. Design’s place in the firm is poorly promoted and even less identified.

Le Lieu du Design’s essential purpose is to contribute to raising corporate awareness of design’s contribution, convincing businesses it is a genuine investment in the future.

Especially since design is not the exclusive preserve of major corporations. It is a powerful economic tool which must serve the interests of small businesses.

Design, Creating Value

In our opinion, design is a major differentiation and competitive factor for firms. The more a firm uses design, the more it distances itself from solely price-based competition.

In Denmark, firms that use design have sales 22% higher than those that don’t. Design’s average penetration rate in firms is 35%. Nearly 50% of Danish firms with less than 10 employees purchase design services from local designers.

In the United Kingdom, two-thirds of firms deem design to be inherent to their future economic performance. Studies have shown that a firm using £100 worth of design services doubles its sales.

In Korea, industrial design has been promoted and developed as a competitive factor for over ten years. The goal is to recruit at least one designer in each small business.

In Japan, the alliance between private firms and public authorities is entirely at the service of the country’s industrial power.

In Finland, 50% of national firms use professional design services and 30% take design into account for their strategic decisions.

Design must occupy a central place in value production. This is not sufficiently the case in France. Le Lieu du Design’s vocation is to create tools, provide services, gather skills, and increase partnerships uniting industrialists and designers.

Various advantages design offers at the industrial level:

• It provides for promoting or enhancing the firm’s image, strengthening its identity and improving its visibility, or even helping it reposition itself on the market.
• It creates a social connection, contributes to humanizing spaces, improving daily life.
• It improves product quality and life expectancy.
• It provides users with comfort and security: improving manageability, increasing reliability. Design contributes to more intuitive and serene product usage.
• It can reduce manufacturing costs and allow firms to achieve economies of scale and increased productivity.
• It participates in environmental protection through the ever more present eco-design rationale: the Ile-de-France Region and Le Lieu du Design awarded the Region’s Prix Observer to Pascal Dovic in October 2008 celebrating the Prix Observer’s tenth anniversary.
• It instills dynamism in the firm’s research and innovation policy.
• It affects the offer: proposing new product and service ranges that better fulfill clients’ and users’ needs.
• It is not only a factor in technological innovation but also organizational innovation.
• It provides for promoting certain traditional skills and knowledge that are also required for executing certain projects.
• It provides for conducting formal, sensory, and structural research.
• It incites reviewing existing and proposed product packaging and packing and has a determining influence on storage and transportation.
• It allows firms to be reactive by appropriately responding to needs expressed by consumers.