Eco­nom­ic Rel­e­vance of Design

The study was con­duct­ed first and fore­most to gath­er infor­ma­tion on top­ics relat­ed to design in Bavaria includ­ing the sit­u­a­tion regard­ing the design sec­tor after two years of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the eco­nom­ic value
cre­at­ed by design and design ser­vices, and the roles design and providers of design ser­vices play in com­pa­ny strategies.

• The impact of the Coro­na pan­dem­ic on the busi­ness sit­u­a­tion was less than antic­i­pat­ed. Since Feb­ru­ary 2022, how­ev­er, the sit­u­a­tion has been severe­ly cloud­ed by the war in Ukraine.
• Almost 60% of the com­pa­nies sur­veyed employ staff design­ers. The remain­ing 40% are dis­trib­uted among solo self-employed in the design indus­try and medi­um-sized com­pa­nies with­out an in-house design department.
• Only one tenth of the respon­dents offer design con­sult­ing, although this is like­ly to be a great poten­tial for the design industry.
• There are clear dif­fer­ences in the stat­ed com­pe­ten­cies, espe­cial­ly with regard to future devel­op­ment fields — a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for Bavar­i­an designers.
• Over­all, the eco­nom­ic rel­e­vance of design is rat­ed as high by 84% of the respondents.

The survey’s core con­sists of an anony­mous stan­dard­ized sur­vey on the sit­u­a­tion and devel­op­ment in 2020 to 2022 as well as struc­tured inter­views with select­ed experts from busi­ness, sci­ence and design, from which pos­si­ble sce­nar­ios and rec­om­men­da­tions for action have been derived.

• The design sec­tor must empha­size and com­mu­ni­cate its eco­nom­ic rel­e­vance to a larg­er extent by using assess­ment approach­es in a pro­fes­sion­al man­ner with the objec­tive of sub­stan­ti­at­ing the con­tri­bu­tion of design
  ser­vices to the val­ue chain.
• Com­pa­nies and insti­tu­tions using design-rel­e­vant ser­vices (deliv­ered by exter­nal ser­vice providers or inter­nal employ­ees) must be aware of the eco­nom­ic rel­e­vance of these ser­vices and must ana­lyze their contribution
  to the val­ue chain.

Watch the record­ing of a press brief­ing (in Ger­man) with Joachim Kobuss on the pre­sen­ta­tion of the study at the Presse­Club München in April 2022.