The European € Design project lays the foundations for measuring the impact of design at the macroeconomic level

July 7, 2014

The partners of the European project € Design - Measuring Design Value, coordinated by BCD Barcelona Design Center, have presented in Brussels the results of this initiative, the objective of which is to identify and establish the guidelines for measuring design as an economic factor of production, as well as its impact on the GDP of countries and regions.

Bonifacio García-Porras, head of the Innovation for Growth unit of the Directorate General for Business and Industry of the European Commission; and Isabel Roig, CEO of BCD, along with other project partners.
After two years of work, the results of the project have been released, providing detailed guidelines that expose and justify a new paradigm for design, understood as an economic factor of production that contributes to growth and employment; three new statistical questions have been established and tested that allow the inclusion of design in the usual systems for collecting data on innovation in Europe; and a table of indicators has been created as a tool for disseminating results.
The project has been led by BCD Barcelona Centro de Diseño (Spain) with the participation of Copenhagen Business School (Denmark); Designaustria (Austria); University of Cambridge (UK); Hungarian Intellectual Property Office (Hungary) and SVID Swedish Industrial Design Foundation (Sweden).
During the final conference, a guide was presented, aimed at public administration, which sets the guidelines for collecting and interpreting design data in line with the Frascati Manuals published by the OECD and Eurostat in their R&D and Innovation versions. The ultimate goal is to obtain tangible results that demonstrate the importance of design as a fundamental element to improve Europe's innovative capacity and increase economic growth and the competitiveness of companies in the global market. This guide is proposed as a new Manual of the Frascati family of manuals, which the project leaders propose to name Manual Barcelona because this is the city where the meeting of experts that laid the foundations of the € Design project took place.
The objectives of the project "€ Design - Measuring Design Value" are part of the Europe 2020 strategy, a strategic plan approved by the European Commission that includes priority objectives in the medium and long term, such as the creation of jobs, the transformation of ideas in employment, as well as improvements that affect various areas of today's society and people's quality of life. Research and innovation strategies for smart specialization (RIS3) are a key element of the Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth.

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