Axel Magnuson

In a matter of ten years the structure of the global economy has changed, and with it the services that business demands of its employees and suppliers.

The knowledge economy has morphed into the “Creative Economy”.

What was once central to corporations — price, quality, and much of the left-brain, digitized analytical work associated with knowledge — is fast being shipped off to lower-paid, highly trained Chinese and Indians, as well as Hungarians, Czechs, and Russians.[1]

And the same has happened to the business of design – much has been shipped to the lower-wage parts of the world.

What has taken its place is the “creative economy” characterized by product and service innovation that is the key to growth and staying ahead of the competition. And the key to that is “right brain” kind of thinking, aka creativity. Beyond the ephemeral, this creativity is loaded with the more formalized terms of “design thinking”[2] and design strategy, more structured ways of getting consistently viable innovations. At the core of that design thinking is the notion of creating a consumer experience that is unparalleled by competitors – something that plays on the perceptions, reasoning, and actions of consumers in a way that the competition can’t or won’t match.

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[1] “Get Creative: How to build creative companies”. Business Week, August 1, 2005

[2] “Strategy by Design”, Tim Brown. Fast Company, June 2005, page 3.