Artistic design in a competitive world

To achieve competitive advantage in order to survive on a globalized market, industries and companies perceive an urgent need for innovation. Design is increasingly considered a success factor of innovation, and accordingly governments are devising design policies to harness design for ‘driving’ innovation, and hence boosting competitiveness. Thus the design community finds itself under increasing pressure to meet new requirements. There is evidence to suggest that the predominant political discourse in terms of competitiveness of nations and their industries, may lead to design policies that are neither entirely rational, nor beneficial to the design community and to community at large. From our vantage point at a Danish academic institution for research-based artistic design education, we review some of this evidence, analyse the problems connected with design policies, and suggest how the design community might respond to design policy-making in order to help prevent its detrimental effects. We find that while obviously policy makers carry a heavy responsibility, so too the design community should use whatever influence it has to ensure rationality and legitimacy of design policies, and to encourage policy makers to create framework conditions for design that will unleash its true potential for contributing to the society of which it is part.