Design Policy, Designers and New Skill for Difficult times

Under the new national policy introduced in 2007, design is expected to tbe worth 1% of India's GDP by 2009. If the target is met, the value of Indian design will have grown by 1000% by 2015. Under the plan India aims to produce 5000 to 8000 designers a year through investments in new design centres.

Western companies which recently invested in Indian designs include IBM, Texas Instruments, Cisco, Philips and Whirlpool. But this represents a very small portion of the big thing which is yet to come.

Indian fashion design is now worth around $ 2000 million a year. A new 'Designed in India' tag has been launched as a mark of quality.

This is what Sir Cox, the head of the British Design Council had to say about India's design efforts: "What you're seeing is an enormous effort going into industrial design capabilities".

This is good news for India and Indian Designers. But what is better is that companies regularly look for talented people. And who are these talented people? They are specifically people with 'Design Thinking' capabilities. People who see challenges and opportunities in everything they observe and then create opportunities for greater wealth for the companies, greater wealth for themselves and prosperity for the society at large.

Design Thinking would now be the new skill -- especially in such difficult times.