More thoughts: National Design Policy+ SMEs Insights

Hi,

 

NATONAL DESIGN POLICY

 

As a sequel to my thoughts, I also think that we are misssing a point if we do not connect

'DESIGN' to 'ENTREPRENEUR' (noun+verb both).  A successful entreprenur is well rounded as a 'design thinker'. He has a capability for going by 'gut feel', penetrating insights into market and society and hunger for making things happen through internal synthesis.

Similarly, there are numerous examples where 'designers' have turned into an entrepreneur (beyond starting a design consulting company, like me).

 

A country should be promoting 'design' and 'entreprenurship' at the bottom most level of industry and enterprise. This may encompass the technology start-ups, craftsmen and micro-suppliers to SMEs and multinationals.

 

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SMEs

 

Two days back I attended and spoke at a SME conference in Mumbai, organised by Financial Express. I already knew that this sector is a sleeping giant for great Indian dream, but this seminar brought sharper focus on that. Here are the learnings, which all of us should know and add-

 

SMEs constitute-

a) 95% of Industrial production and 40% of the total export is through SMEs in India

b) Employing close to 3.5 Crore people

c) Producing over 7000 products

d) Adds to 7% of GDP (..point to be noted)

 

Last october a new category has been added to SMEs, called 'Micro-enterprise'. Government identifies them based on the investments in 'plant and machinery' i.e. for manufacturing sector - micro enterprise has max investment in plant and manchinery of 25 lakhs, Small scale <5 crores, Medium 10 Crores. Similarly, for service sector (like design companies), it is 10 lakhs for micro, 2 crores for small and 5 crores for medium scale enterprise.

 

This conference attracted around 100 odd SME owners and several SME business heads from Banks and Financial Institutions like RBI, CRISIL, SBI FACTORS etc. etc. I spoke on 'Life Beyond Balance Sheet' i.e. Innovation. I learnt that there is dire need to have a good standard presentation on 'WHAT IS DESIGN', which all of us can use. All of us (practising designers) have been making our own pitch presentations since olden days that changes according to the 'design literate' and 'not so literate' clients. It would help if under a national initiative, a lot of visual communication material can be made just to address that single question, in a simple language (no mega talk).

 

Secondly, coming from a design company, my presentation had some visuals of 'before design'  and 'after design' images. They always make a good story. While everybody else has flat presentations (either verbal or too much text), such industry groups welcome the visual change in long events.

 

Thirdly, some of the basic things that we learn at design school like 'gestalt laws' and how to apply them in day-to-day corporat life, can provide a lot od interesting discussion. We do not need to always use 'iPoD' as a pivotal design prop.

 

Fourth, I also talked about how to get design help i.e. name of the institutions, design companies etc.... I listed them all...But there is no single point-of-contact I can refer...probably Prof. Kirti Trivedi is listening and he would spruce up the www.designinindia.net site to make it single authentic resource of design support.

 

 

Best regards

Manoj Kothari

NID-AED-PD-97, IIT Bombay B.Tech. 92

manoj@oniodesign.com

 

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