Dear Francois and Jean
Thank you for your encouraging replies.
The focus of the scheme is majorly on supporting Design Projects, with its
approx. 60% fund allocated to support 400 design projects (300 professional
design projects and 100 student design projects). And as Jean mentioned,
our role as an implementing agency is to mediate between the two important
stakeholders. The project proposals are therefore prepared by the designer
and submitted to the scheme through the industry. We have now quite a few
successful design intervention case studies emerged from the scheme ( one
may view few of them at
http://designclinicsmsme.org/Showcase%20Design%20(optimized%20for%20web%20view).pdfthough
this particular document is about a year old). The scheme expects
the industry to contribute 40% of the expenses for the project.
For the micro and small scale industries, as they being majorly
component manufacturers and/or suppliers, the focus is also on providing
remedial suggestions for improvement of their processes, system, work
environment etc. for these industries to test the benefits of design at the
earliest and with minimum of investment. The unique aspect of the scheme
is therefore its second component - the Design Awareness Programme, that
brings the designer to the doorsteps of the industries to interact and
identify various opportunities for improvements. ( some of the outcomes can
be viewed at
http://www.designclinicsmsme.org/empanelment-media-reports/reports/design-awareness-programme-reports)
The challenge being, and as I see this as a major design opportunity ( I
had therefore titled my post ) to scale up a tested approach, and therefore
to develop systems and specifications that facilitate developing fair
amount of clarity, common understanding and transparency among all the
three stakeholders, the government, industries and the designers, without
loosing the required flexibility to accomodate contextual needs and
approaches.
The advantage of this scheme being based at NID, a design institute, as
Francois mentioned, is that the collective experiences and learnings of the
faculty members and the institute of over five decades ( The Scheme - its
Evolution ; October 9, 2011 ; www.designclinicsindia.blogspot.in ) has
helped develop the scheme. The scheme also provides opportunity to the
design schools in india, both their teachers and students to work with this
challenging sector at various levels.
As the main objective being to help these important industry sector of the
country move up the value chain, government support is much necessary to
implement it at this scale. However the scheme as it progress from seminar
to workshop and further to the professional projects, demands contribution
from the industry to ensure their interests, seriousness and involvement
to see the fruits of the investments.
Thanking you
Shashank
On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 11:02 PM, Jean Schneider <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> Hello Shashank and François,
>
> We have been running a similar scheme here in France. Although much more
> modest in figures (but of comparable scale if we were to divide by the
> ratio of population or number of businesses) !
>
> I would be interested in getting your support documents. I could send some
> of ours, but they are in french !
>
> My personal opinion at this stage is pretty much the following. It might
> not apply at all to your context, but still :
> - these schemes can be effective, and deliver value for (public) money, if
> the process goes beyond sensitizing and disseminating information. I don't
> believe that promoting design to businesses is very effective if it stops
> at the level of (fabulous) cases, clarification about the costs, different
> types of design etc. At the end, a large majority of businesses that come
> out of such sessions prove unable to discriminate between priorities, have
> difficulties in writing a proper commission, and a contract, and comparing
> different design offers. This results in frustration on all sides, which is
> not what we want;
> - of course, one can argue that better a project than none. But we think
> that it is not the first project that is difficult (every one wants,
> somehow, to succeed), it is the second, or, generally, the next one. And
> this might require changing designers, looking for different skills etc. In
> some regions, the design ecosystem might not be there at all !
> - we have a rather strict information policy regarding the due respect for
> creation and design : in terms of finances/costs, respect for the
> competence of designers : they are the experts regarding design, not the
> rest of the company's staff, or, to put it in other terms, the fact that
> "you pay + colors are a matter of personal taste" doesn't allow people to
> despise design proposals. Of course, we are not there during the process,
> but we are more and more pushing to positionning ourselves as a mediator
> all over the design project.
>
> In terms of financing, I agree with Francois that if this depends only on
> public money, it can become risky. We try to get businesses to contribute
> at different stages, and hopefully intermediary institutions to include
> design support in the broader schemes of innovation support.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Jean
>
> Jean Schneider
> Chargé de projet APCI / Project manager APCI
> [log in to unmask] +33(0)661 350 357
> www.apci.asso.fr
>
>
>
>
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