[Design Indaba conf] Nussbaum talks Designomics

Design is driving economics, believes Nussbaum, former financial journalist turned fierce advocate for and chronicler of design innovation. In fact, he believes design is today by far the most important business component.

The only constant is change

The only constant is change and the world is facing constant, cascading change, disrupting life as we know it, says Nussbaum. The economy is recovering from the worst recession since the Great Depression, re-emerging changed.

So, too, is design re-emerging as something new. The world is now turning to design innovation to help it steer a sustainable course.

The change Nussbaum talks about is specifically reflected in five key factors.

The first of these is the rise and fall of nations, or specifically the Rise of the Rest and the Fall of the West. Countries such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa specifically are changing the power dynamics of the world.

Nussbaum refers to a decision from ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, to allow domain names to be written in non-Latin languages as the end of the dominance of English on the Internet and likens the event to the day the US dollar stopped using the Gold standard (ICANN itself described the rule change as representing “the biggest technical change to the Internet since it was created four decades ago”).

It represents a move away from one dominant, global business culture to a new multi-culturism business will need to learn to embrace.

Rise and fall of generations

Still more importantly is the rise and fall of generations, as Baby Boomers are being replaced by Generation Y as the drivers of the global economy. Nussbaum describes Gen Y as urbane, green, generative (they like making things, not just buying things), global, participative, collaborative and multi-cultural. It's the ‘Learn, Make, Share' generation and they are changing consumer habits dramatically.

They have also embraced digital environments and are using it to create their own communities. Digital community is the new normal, says Nussbaum.

The other two major changes the world is facing relates to urbanisation (a greater percentage of people are living in cities than ever before) and global warming. The Design Indaba talk focused on the first three issues only (nations, generations, digital).

All this has meant that design has moved from the sphere of artefacts to that of social systems. Design has therefore become more important to innovation than technology. This gives design an optimistic, future-facing perspective. It means we are factoring in people and not just cold hard technology, and ties Nussbaum's presentation nicely in with the unofficial theme of this year's Design Indaba, namely making our society, environment and design, more humane.

Follow Bruce Nussbaum on Twitter, tweeting live from Design Indaba, at @brucenussbaum.