White paper on creativity - ebla center

Chapter 4professional break and, mostimportantly allows them to “sign”projects.The relations between designers andcompanies described so far concernexternal forms of collaboration mainlyin the field of industrial design.Some designers, however, do morethan simply design the product. Theymay extend their activities to productsystemconsulting, and controlling andparticipating in the process from thedevelopment of the idea to itsimplementation and marketcommunications, as well as during itswhole life cycle. In such cases thecompany-designer relationshipbecomes more intense and continuous,and the entrepreneur may find it moreeconomical – in terms of transactioncosts – to hire the designer. Designersmay thus have very varied roles withinthe company organisation. They maywork in close collaboration with theR&D department, promoting, forexample, research on new materials tobe used in developing projects or ontesting new applications for theoutcome of previous research.Designers may also work alongside thecommercial services or acquireinformation on product sales trendsfrom which to establish consumerpreferences and predict consumer tastefor the purposes of future productdevelopment.Lastly, they may work in a selfcontainedcompany research centre,which interfaces with all other areas ofthe company (R&D, production anddistribution). In this case the designer’sactivity becomes internal consulting onthe product system. Depending on thesize of the company, this activity maybe carried out by internal staff or byexternal consultants who will alsoinclude professional designers andtechnicians or crafts people, but alsooperators in commercial areas, gearedto design and able to share the samephilosophy and corporate language.4.6 An emblematic case:Milan and the designeractors in the furniture sectorCurrently, there is only one area in Italyin which the various above-mentionedforms of collaboration betweendesigners and companies can all befound: the so-called “metadistrict”district of Lombard design, which hasdeveloped in six provinces – Como,Milan, Bergamo, Brescia, Mantua andLecco – with a total of 46,054employees and 11 research centres(Club dei distretti, www.distretti.org). Theestimated annual turnover of themetadistrict amounts to around 250million euros and around 40% ofproduction goes for export.The term metadistrict refers to thespecific nature of this vast areaembracing the traditional furnituredistrict, involving many towns inBrianza (i.e. Northwest Lombardy)with Milan for a hub, especially asregards the supply of integratedservices which go from developingWHITE PAPER ON CREATIVITY 104