The new industrial and commercial balance of the world, the green and sustainable economy, the management of a new social intelligence around networks are the principal stakes on which “globalisation of the economy and trade” will be dictated.

Designers will be the major actors to study and respond to the profound changes in which products and services will be conceived, sold and consumed. It seems likely that they will play a strategic role in the companies that need to develop. Many of them will have to adapt, mutate, and change their line of business if they wish to continue to live through the evolution and the industrial reorganisation. The socio-economic importance of the approach to creation and innovation in the global context follows the era of total quality: it is no longer a matter of “doing even better what we already know how to do” but doing by creating “the unknown from the known” in order to create new situations on a greater and sustainable level. This is probably how we should reconsider the industrial paradigms of western economies faced with globalisation. It is up to GM, Ford, and Renault to reflect logically and strategically on what they could produce as long as it is not cars. Who would have thought 10 years ago that Apple would be the market leader in music broadcasting apart from its designers perhaps?”

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Christian Guellerin is executive Director of L’Ecole de design Nantes Atlantique in France. He is President of “Creative Innnovation”, company which runs a branch of L’Ecole de design in Shanghai. He is President of Africa design school recently created in Cotonou (Benin).

He is otherwise Honorary President (after having been Executive President) of Cumulus, which is the most important International Association of Schools and Universities or Art, Design and Media.

He intervenes at the occasion of many events about Design and Entrepreneurship. He defends a Design of Innovation as a strategic discipline of business to generate added value.

Christian Guellerin has a background of business and finance before having been enrolled as the director of a design school.

He has taught Business and Finance in the University of Paris-Dauphine and in some business schools.

LinkedIn – Christian Guellerin