Last night I attended a Haworth-hosted kick-off event for Design West Michigan, a regional, cross-disciplinary design organization.

Focused on exploring “design as an economic building block for the region” the DWM was seeded by a federally-funded DOL WIRED grant, working with The Right Place and Lakeshore Advantage, and part of the Innovation Works initiatives. We’re connected to these efforts in several ways including the development of the Innovation Works identity and Idea Portal. DWM is sponsoring a Business Academy, coming in July, to be held at Kendall College of Art & Design, which aims at exposing business people to design concepts. People Design and other design professionals will be presenting case studies to help with the learning.

I’ve been serving on advisory committee, and I’m thrilled to see this come to fruition. Upon Chris’s suggestion, Yang and I gave Daniel Pink’s “A Whole New Mind” to the staff for Christmas last year, so we were pleased when he came to West Michigan for a lecture. Upon learning about the group, Pink offered the following:

“West Michigan is doing what other regions no doubt will be doing soon: Developing design education for business people who aren’t designers. The piloting of a Business Academy is a wise and savvy move to support economic development.”

This prompted Julie to ask: What do business people need to know to be better consumers and purchasers of design and design services? Good question. Here are some thought starters, literally straight out of the People Design Playbook:

Who designs and who we consider designers are not limited to who went to design school or who have “designer” on their business card. Designers are those who participate in the process of design.
The designer is a problem solver, with keen skills in perception and intuition. Designers — creative people — tend to have special skills for facilitating, describing, deciding, visualizing, creating meaning, creating context, creating value. Designers believe they can solve a problem. This is partly why they can. A designer’s unique strength is in managing the design process to produce innovation — the process of creating something.

Bedrock skills for designers

• Conceive and make stuff
• Make things, places, and messages distinctive
• Empathize with people
• Imagine ideal usage experiences
• Sense and value what is new
• Simplify and clarify information
• Dramatically affect preference and value
• Display mental flexibility, openness
• Focus on the idea, not whose idea
• See relationships, make connections
• Seek problems
• See problems as market opportunities

DWM is just a start, but it seems like a really good start. I think it capitalizes on two important trends: design thinking and localization. The pair can not only help spur economic growth in West Michigan, but make it a better place to live.