The Design Council has welcomed the first European Design Day - October 1, 2009, organised by the Bureau of European Design Associations (BEDA), and is calling on European nations to work more closely together to improve, harmonise and share information on their design industries.
The aim of the European Design Day is to highlight the important role of design in driving innovation in European business, and to campaign for the inclusion of design in the European Commission's innovation agenda and policy-making.
"We welcome European Design Day and will continue working with BEDA on ensuring design is embedded in innovation policy at European level," said David Kester, Chief Executive of the Design Council. "The key to this will be more collaboration on research projects that can help inform policy making and ultimately boost investment in design.
Governments around the world are increasingly turning to creativity and innovation to help renew economic growth. Design has a major role to play in these efforts - and countries who measure their design capabilities will be able to develop the policies that best support creativity."
Measuring innovation and R&D has helped policymakers around the world develop policies that enhance competitiveness and encourage investment by firms, but there have been few efforts to measure design capabilities and its impact nationally.
Recent research by the University of Cambridge and supported by the Design Council was the major step in bridging this gap, by publishing the findings in the first global 'International Design Scoreboard'. This work provides a proof of principle that design can be measured on a national level and compared 'like with like' to gain an international picture.
This first iteration of the International Scoreboard was unable to include data from some major European countries, including France, Germany and Spain as these countries' historical data was too incomplete.
The Design Council is in discussions to explore how more complete data can be obtained, and the possibility of a further collaboration with Cambridge University to repeat this landmark research, expanding it to include more countries and working improve the data sets for European nations.