John Maeda – Design Partner at venture capital firm KPCB – recently published the second and 2016 edition of his #DesignInTech Report. I shared his first one almost exactly a year ago. His core thesis is that we are heading towards a world where technology, business, and design become closely integrated – in school, in business, and so on. Throughout the report he looks at the increasing impact that design and designers are having within the startup ecosystem. Here are a few verbatim bullet points: - Design isn’t just about beauty; it’s about market relevance and meaningful results. - 36% of the top 25 funded startups are co-founded by designers, up from 20% in 2015. - The general word “design” will come to mean less as we will start to qualify the specific kind of design we mean. - Currently design education lags the technology industry’s needs for data-oriented, coding enabled graduates with business acumen. - We must consciously invest in education to develop a more hybrid perspective on creativity in the 21st century: Technology x Business x Design. - President Obama’s signing of ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act) into law in 2015 is a positive sign: by turning STEM into STEAM (adding Art) in K-12 education as a US priority. As somebody who studied design (architecture), business, and computer science (briefly, before switching to architecture), I probably have a bit of a biased view here. But to the extent that I can be objective, I really see this as the future. I am a big supporter of the transformation from STEM to STEAM. Below is a quote that Maeda uses to end his report, which I will also use to end this post:
“Engineers are efficient problem solvers. Business people think short term. Designer want things to be elegant and beautiful. All three need to create collaboration and harmony, and honor the value each other brings. There needs to be a new kind of ‘multi-dimensional’ approach to design that is yet to be invented.” –Linda Holliday
One of the most interesting talks that I attended while I was in graduate school at Penn was by John Maeda.
John operates at the intersection of design, technology, and business, and I find his work fascinating. He’s probably best described as a graphic designer, visual artist, computer scientist, academic, and author. And when I heard him speak in 2008, he was also President of the Rhode Island School of Design.
More recently though, John has entered the world of venture capital by becoming a “Design Partner” at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) in Silicon Valley. But what’s really interesting about this move is that when he joined KPCB in January 2014, he was the first designer to arrive on Silicon Valley’s legendary Sand Hill Road. No other VC firm had a designer in-house.
And that’s because design hasn’t, at least historically, been considered that important. In fact, in some cases it was seen as being detrimental. Brian Chesky – cofounder of Airbnb – has gone on record saying that when they were first starting out, Silicon Valley didn’t think that a bunch of designers from RISD could build and run a company. Boy were they wrong.
So that’s changing. As of this month (March 2015), there are now 6 other designers on Sand Hill Road. The venture capital community has seemingly woken up to the value of great design.
John Maeda has branded this shift, #DesignInTech. And he recently gave a presentation on the topic at SXSW. It’s a great read, particularly if you’re somebody who cares about design. Click here if you can’t see it below.
//www.slideshare.net/fullscreen/kleinerperkins/design-in-tech-report-2015
Design in Tech Report 2015 from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers