Takeaways from the DMI Insights Dinner
By Dr. Antonia Ward, Design Knowledge Manager, Design Council
The DMI Insights Dinner, held at the Royal College of Art, London, November 30, 2005, was the first pilot event run by DMI/London as part of the Design Management Institute’s effort to meet the requests for knowledge sharing on a local level by many regions and cities throughout the world.
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David Godber addresses attendees during the
DMI Insights dinner. |
Chair Harry Rich, Deputy CEO of the UK’s Design Council, welcomed forty delegates—many but not all members of DMI—to ‘an evening of learning, sharing, and meeting’. David Godber, Director of Nissan Design Europe, gave an illuminating talk about the challenges he currently faces as head of the Japanese car giant’s London studio at the Rotunda, Paddington, UK.
Describing the work of his 120-strong, multicultural cross-functional team, David talked about the challenge of “establishing a vision” and then communicating this to board members “…because they are the people writing the checks.” He explained that because the eight Nissan studios worldwide work in competition with each other, “we live or die by our own capabilities.” So challenge number one, he summarized, is “getting from a blank sheet of paper to a £1.5 million prototype that decision makers can touch and feel, and then ultimately say ‘I want this’.”
His challenge number two was diversity. With a studio of predominantly male automotive designers designing for markets where fifty per cent of purchases are influenced by female decision makers, David called for higher and further education establishments to approach diversity in a pragmatic way—it was a call for more female designers. “A product has to have balance to approach the marketplace effectively,” he said.
A third challenge identified was a challenge for design consultancies. David explained that the trend for Tier One carmakers is to bring in-house all their value-added activities, such as modelling, digitization and computer graphics. This, he warned, will be a challenge for subcontracting design houses as there will be less work coming from the automotive sector.
Three guests offered their responses to the presentation:
Clive Grinyer
Director, Design and Usability, Orange Group
Clive identified evangelism as the key challenge for designers. “Design is politics—it’s about getting into other people’s minds, non-designers’ minds. We need to evangelize design, to take it to areas we are quite uncomfortable in. We need to go out of the studio and into corporations and communicate and evangelize the power of design.”
This would, he said, lead to changes in the corporate environment. “David talked about the physical environment of his studio and yes, the physical environment is important, but design fails where there is no acceptance. There has to be a management environment where design is appreciated and it is understood that design is key.” It would also influence what he talked about as permission. “We have to have permission to design—someone has to ask us to do it. Steve Jobs gives Jonathan Ive permission to design—when Steve wasn’t there he was the same designer but couldn’t design great products because he didn’t have the permission.”
Naomi Gornick
Honorary Professor, University of Dundee
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Naomi Gornick contributes her thoughts
to the discussion |
Naomi’s response raised questions about how design is managed as a policy at Nissan, rather than as a process, and about the organizational dynamic and overall feeling about design within the company. Particular areas of interest were the ways in which the studio, described by David as a ‘blank canvas,’ was decorated differently for each project. She also raised the issue of the way in which the eight Nissan studios compete with each other. “What happens when you lose? How do all eight studios remain viable?” And finally, with climate change high on the political agenda, Naomi raised the issue of design’s wider environmental responsibilities.
Xenia Viladàs Jene
Chief Executive, Sociedad Estatal para el Desarrollo del Diseo y la Innovacion
Xenia talked about the difficulty of making politicians understand that creativity is a high priority, especially when technology seems to be taking center stage. “It’s a struggle to even be part of the agenda, and a challenge for this to be translated into the boardroom.”
Additionally, diversity should not just be about men and women but about “the diversity of all cultural backgrounds, all needs, all users. We have to meet all their expectations, we have to keep all our minds open and we have to keep absorbing all sorts of ideas and knowledge about what’s around us. Precisely because I feel the urgency for design managers to continue learning and opening their minds to new things, DMI’s gatherings are particularly important because they allow us to get in touch with other professionals and to benefit from other people’s experiences.”
At the end of his talk, David Godber issued two challenges for the audience to discuss over dinner. His questions were:
What can industry do to stimulate educators in higher and further education to produce a pipeline of high-potential recruits? What is required to increase design’s presence in the boardroom?
A lively and wide-ranging discussion followed, with a broad array of opinions expressed. Below are just some of the points raised throughout the room.
1. What can industry do to stimulate educators in higher and further education to produce a pipeline of high potential recruits?
“Define a national core curriculum for undergraduate design.”
“Encourage more sandwich courses. As an industry, designers also need to step up and take on more placements.”
“Industry sabbaticals for design teachers—get them back out understanding their customers.”
“Do we want to turn designers into managers? Shouldn’t it be about teaching companies to appreciate the skills that their recruits already have?”
“Designers should give limited pro bono time to universities. But their time has to be used intelligently by the institution.”
“Publish graduate league tables … so everyone gets to see who is turning out useful graduates.”
“Industry could sponsor education—a module sponsored by Nissan?”
“Industry needs to hire more design managers so the pipeline is demand-led.”
“Business schools and design schools teaching design management together.”
“Bring design back as a primary school core subject to raise awareness.”
“De-craft design education.”
“Pay more to incentivize!”
“Industry should not expect ‘ready-to-work’ graduates.”
“Educators should encourage cross-disciplinary work, especially in engineering.”
“Industry must say what it expects of students.”
“The idea of design in business schools should be less precious.”
2. What is required to increase design’s presence in the boardroom?
“Bringing design to the CEO’s table will be meaningless unless design has something very valuable to offer. Pulling up a chair with a smile on your face, pencil in hand, ready to improve the last version of the current product is one thing; earning the right to sit there and drive the group is quite another.”
“Increase the ability of design people to talk the language of business and demonstrate the value of design to business tangibly.”
“Involve someone from the board early—make an ally and get them excited by visuals and models. Everyone likes to touch something!”
“More opportunities for senior level business/design networking, such as a ‘senior executive dinner’. Most of these events are currently too low level: senior business people don’t want to meet the sales team, they want to meet a very experienced practitioner.”
“Creation of a national advice network of senior consultants. People like myself [managing director of product design consultancy] would love to work for more small UK companies, it just isn’t cost effective to go out and find them.”
“Designers’ awareness of boardroom issues—e.g. finance—needs to be raised.”
“Networking events with venture capitalists. Design can add huge value for these chaps by helping them plan better exits.”
“Perhaps designers don’t want to increase design’s presence in the boardroom?”
The evening closed with thanks to all speakers and especially to John Bound, Harry Rich, Kimberly Kapner, and Gus Desbarats for their help in organizing this event.
DMI would like to thank the Design Council and Alloy Ltd. for their support of the DMI Insights Dinner.
Following a PhD and academic research and teaching, Dr Antonia Ward spent eight years as a design journalist, editing UK magazines including New Design and FX. She joined the Design Council in 2005 where she works developing website content.
This article appeared in the February
2006 eBulletin.
Feedback on DMI Viewpoints and article proposals
are always welcome! Please email jtobin@dmi.org.
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