In the summer of 2012, we worked on a pilot project to map the Danish Design Ecosystem at CIID for the Ministry of Business Affairs to help inform the Core committee writing the New Design Policy for Denmark. As part of our detailed research we found some very interesting clusters that had formed due to proximity to large companies investing in design, design-production interdependance or availability of great talent. A lot of information that we knew already, but seeing the connections with dynamic data we sourced from the public records brought in new perspectives.
I was invited to be a speaker at the Pune Design Festival recently, in January 2013. And here for the first time I felt we were living through a cluster formation, fully know it was happening and with the collective knowledge and power to help realise it too. Pune has become a Design hub of sorts with the local network investing in design schools and a great infrastructure for prototyping and sampling evolving here. Over the years, I knew many friends with a background in Industrial Design moved here to set up design companies; incidentally Indias largest design company is also in Pune.
Still, the design industry here is heavily form – focussed and styling driven in its approach. How can Pune leap forward to be on the frontier of using design as a tool for innovation? There is a parallel cluster of small manufacturing industries that could benefit from this new approach. Some of the older design studios are slowly drifting towards a higher level of concept driven, systemic thinking. How can we leverage this to elevate the entire sector emerging in Pune?