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The Creative Industries
As Singapore seeks to remake its economy and stay competitive, it must enhance its creative capacity as well as develop its creative industries - namely the arts and cultural, media and design industries in Singapore. DesignSingapore is a specific initiative targeting design as part of Singapore's creative industries.
The DesignSingapore Initiative
DesignSingapore is Singapore's response to the value propositions of design. It is a national strategy to promote and leverage design excellence as a key driver of national competitiveness and creativity in an ideas-driven economy.
The vision of the Initiative is to establish Singapore as Asia's leading centre for design excellence, and to develop both a vibrant design services cluster and culture.
Broadly, this vision has 3 foci:
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Design Excellence - for a pervasive culture of design excellence, integrated art, business and technology, from the boardroom to the streets. |
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Vibrant Design Services Cluster - for a vibrant and integrated design services cluster, nurturing world-class expertise and enhancing design creativity |
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Leading International Design Hub - for Singapore to be the design excellence gateway to Asia, and Asia to the world |
As a national collaborative initiative, it seeks to bring about greater convergence amongst the different players in the design ecosystem: enterprise (industry users and designers), expertise and education.
Design. A Competitive Advantage
In a crowded global marketplace, businesses can no longer compete on price and functionality alone. To be at the forefront of global competition, companies and even entire economies need the ability to constantly tap on new ideas, innovate and move beyond existing paradigms.
Design is at the heart of this new competition. By bringing together considerations of form, function, aesthetics, culture, engineering and lifestyle, the design process helps solves problems and creates new value and markets. Design is therefore critical to enhancing competitiveness and creativity in all stages of business - from product or service conceptualisation and development through to manufacturing, marketing and the design of user experience.
Design. A National Agenda.
Design is critical not only to businesses, but is also high on the national agenda for many countries. Governments around the world have recognised the importance of design to national competitiveness in the following ways:
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Driving the innovation process and hence industry competitiveness; |
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Contributing to the level of creativity, cultural buzz and attractiveness of a place for global talent; and |
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Strengthening the marketing and unique “branding” of a country, including its products and services, to the world. |
The accordance of such national significance to design is a direct result of design’s multi-disciplinary and integrative function that cuts across many areas of national concern and planning - such as urban development, enterprise and trade development, education and capability development, culture, heritage and tourism.
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