The second policy booklet (PDF) from the SEE Project was recently published. There will be a total of four policy booklets over the course of the programme.

Design thinking can be a tool for realising social innovation and sustainable development by contributing to long-term behaviour change and integrating the user experience into significantly improved products, processes, services and systems. This Policy Booklet outlines the rationale behind policy intervention in this domain, explores how design can be employed to address social innovation and sustainable development, provides illustrative case studies and proposes policy recommendations. We have applied this framework under four headings: communities, industry, the public sector and policy-making.

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On the 9th November 2009, the SEE project launched its first Policy Booklet on Integrating Design into Regional Innovation Policy (PDF) at the SEE network summit in Copenhagen. SEE is a network of eleven European partners working to lobby our national and regional governments to assimilate design and creativity into public policy. The project is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the INTERREG IVC programme.

The SEE Policy Booklet presents an overview of innovation policy priorities in the SEE partner regions. These priorities were identified from national and regional policy documents and contrasted with the strategic priorities for innovation identified by the European Commission. From this comparative analysis six key issues emerged as common across the policy agendas:

• Innovation in Services
• Public Procurement
• Collaborative Clusters & Networks
• Lead Markets & Eco-innovation
• Intellectual Property Rights
• Broadening the Scope of Innovation

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This past week I attended the first of four thematic workshops as part of the Sharing Experience Europe (SEE) Interreg IVC project. Ireland is one of eleven European partners as well as one of five members of the Policy Recommendation Research Group. After each of the four thematic workshops, a research group partner is responsible for the publication of policy recommendations to be distributed to policy makers and governments. The first will be out in September on “integrating creativity and design into regional innovation policy.”

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Countries that wish to increase their competitive advantage have turned to design as a mechanism to add value to the goods and services that their indigenous companies produce. Recognising that those companies that use design are more successful than those that do not, they invest significant time and effort in promoting and supporting companies to overcome the barriers to its effective use. Their goal is to increase the demand for design.

Increasing demand is only one side of the equation however; it is just as important that there should be a broad and deep supply of designers who can provide services to business to help them add value to their products and services. Without them, an economy can be starved of a key input that helps to differentiate the goods and services it produces.

A range of interrelated issues governs the supply of designers who provide services to business. The role of education is critical, as is the aspiration of the individual and ultimately the market for their services. But there are also a number of other more subtle influences such as the role of the industry support bodies, the nature of continuous professional development and the business empathy of designers themselves.

This report examines the strengths and weaknesses of the sector and makes recommendations about how to build on those strengths in order to stimulate one small but important part of the economy that can create added-value to the economy as a whole. Given the similar barriers faced by the sector in Northern Ireland and Ireland, it makes sense to adopt a cooperative approach to optimise the potential of the sector.

Aidan Gough
DIRECTOR, STRATEGY & POLICY
InterTradeIreland

Download study (PDF, 568k)

Last week I attended the Learning And Technology World Forum – LATWF, a major world Education Ministers conference hosted by the UK government in London. Throughout the week I was part of the Learner’s Voice team composed of 7 students from all over the world. Our duty in this forum was to attend conferences and workshops, maintain a blog about the event and, on the last day, present a plenary in front of 400 delegates including 60+ Ministers of Education.

The most important part of the forum was the closed conference that brought together 60+ Ministers of Education representing countries from all around the world. This conference was about the next steps that countries need to take in order to include technology in their education systems. This was a disappointing session, as we witnessed ministers playing a game of ‘Show and Tell’ instead of trying to figure out answers to their problems. We have heard a lot of aims and ambitions and everybody was talking about ‘what we should do’, but no strategies or promises have been made.

The main issues on everyone’s agenda was changing the curriculum in order to fit the student’s needs and training teachers in order to understand technology better and adapt easier to the student’s needs. My question here was: have anyone asked the students what their needs are?

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Policy makers must find it hard to ignore the man who has made Dyson a household word and a pot of money in the process. This short and sweet interview with Jeff Randall, the Business Editor at Sky News, touches on all the usual themes of the importance of engineering and design within the economy as well as science and technology within schools. Between the lines there are some nice insights about prototyping and the importance of the user. You have to admire a man who recognises the issues and puts his money where his mouth is in creating a college to support design and engineering.

On Monday 21 January 2008, BEDA President Michael Thomson (UK) and Vice-President, Jan R Stavik (Norway) met with Vice-President of the Commission, Günter Verheugen at his office in the European Commission in Brussels.

At the meeting, Günter Verheugen stressed the European Commission’s full agreement with the positioning of design as a “very crucial element” for European competitiveness. “Europe must maintain its position as the most competitive region in the world as far as design is concerned”, said Vice-President Verheugen.

Three key actions were agreed.

1/ The European Commission will issue a Communication on design to be published during the European Year of Creativity and Innovation in 2009. This policy document will include guidance to EU Member States on national design promotion strategies in addition to other measures to support the growth of Europe’s design industries and to stimulate the wider adoption of design by Europe’s 23 million Small and Medium-sized Enterprises.

2/ The Commission will reinforce its efforts to build up a knowledge base for design activity and design policy in Europe. The European project ADMIRE, supported by the Commission under PRO INNO Europe, is currently conducting a mapping study of design and design management in Europe. This information will be complemented by data from existing tools such as the INNO-Policy Trendchart, the Innobarometer and the European Innovation Scoreboard, which will give design a more prominent place from 2008 onwards.

3/ The Commission will ensure the existence of a permanent body for a dialogue on design policy as a key component of Europe’s innovation policy, within the context of achieving the goals of the Lisbon Strategy for Growth and Jobs.

BEDA President Michael Thomson said, “The measures outlined by Vice-President Verheugen today will permanently raise design’s profile in European innovation policy and will help to grow and strengthen design in Europe”.

New Zealanders have been given the chance to write their own laws, with a new online tool launched by police.The “wiki” will allow the public to suggest the wording of a new police act, as part of a government review of the current law, written in 1958.

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