International Perspectives on Design Support for SMEs

Design Management Review, Fall 2004 by Cawood, Gavin, Lewis, Alan, Raulik, Gisele

There is broad consensus that design can significantly enhance the competitiveness and bottom line of small and medium-size enterprises. But what are the best ways to encourage businesses to make this investment? Sharing the outcomes of a global workshop, Gavin Cawood, Alan Lewis, and Gisele Raulik report on the challenges and current best practices for leveraging the use of design among SMEs.

Small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) represent a key element of national economies throughout the world, and they play a significant role in the design, development, and manufacture of most new products. Their small size means that to maintain their competitive advantage in an increasingly harsh international market, they need to be particularly receptive to the latest approaches in product design and development.

However, research has shown that these companies often adopt an ad hoc approach to product design and have a limited understanding of current best practice in this field. This, coupled with their limited resource base, means that they need to rely upon outside support to assist them in identifying and then deploying these new approaches. In consequence, the idea of providing such support via some form of central design support agency or organization has taken root in a number of countries.

In Cardiff (Wales, UK), in May 2004, the First International Workshop on Design Support brought together a range of leading design support practitioners and agencies from around the world to discuss how to better promote and facilitate the successful application of design within SMEs.

The range of experiences reported at the event demonstrated how support mechanisms vary in terms of both structure and strategy according to local economic, social, and political conditions. The Workshop provided an ideal forum to examine different approaches for each set of national circumstances. Despite the variations in infrastructure, resources, and strategies, there are common problems that almost every design support initiative faces, and the collective experience of the delegates provided insights into how to deal with such issues.

The Design Support Workshop

The two-day Workshop hosted 70 delegates from 15 countries. It was centered around keynote presentations by leading practitioners, followed by structured Sharing Experience sessions in which groups of design support practitioners exchanged experiences and views on a variety of topics.

The collective experience of the delegates represented a significant source of knowledge and data on design support mechanisms. In addition to the keynote presentations, the Sharing Experience sessions were recorded and transcribed, and the authors organized structured interviews with all the speakers. While the data is being analyzed, this paper represents an overview of the preliminary findings.

Approaches to Design Support

The main drivers

The Workshop revealed that among the countries represented, there was no single model in terms of the provision of design support. Government, academia, and industry itself were all key players, but their roles and their interrelationship varied from one nation to another.

National (or, in the case of Wales, regional) government-usually assisted by some form of national design organization-was the main driver behind the provision of design support in four of the eleven nations represented at the Workshop. The CSIR in South Africa, the Design Centre in the Czech Republic, Design Wales, and the Korean Institute of Design Promotion all play a key role in the delivery of design support in each nation. As one South African attendee said, "Our government plays a fairly prominent role in terms of design policy, and the CSIR is supporting them in the delivery of the policy-helping to make this happen in academia and in industry."

It is widely acknowledged that small companies looking for practical help are not normally attracted to research-based organizations, such as universities. Despite this, academia was viewed as the biggest influence on design support in two of the countries represented. In India, the main design support scheme-the consulting activity of the National Institute of Design (NID), an autonomous national institution for design education-has been in existence since 1961. In Canada, the design policy strategy has been concentrated in creating a strong design education infrastructure. The aim is to generate a critical mass of designers and, as a result, a wide pool of design expertise for SMEs.

In some economies, industry is the main driver and provider of finance for design support. As the USA delegate commented, "The government is not sponsoring or purchasing design as a big sector of the national economy. So design is very much driven by industry." However, in such cases, industry itself does not deliver design support programs; rather, it promotes the case for specific design incentives, which are then delivered directly via academia or through governmental action, such as tax incentives. This was also the scenario reported for Brazil, where industry's need for design advice is forcing government and trade organizations to create an emerging design support infrastructure.