BRITISH DESIGN INNOVATION — THE VOICE OF INDUSTRIAL & SERVICE DESIGN

British Design Innovation (BDI) is the trade organisation for leading industrial designers, service designers and innovation professionals that promotes members’ creative expertise, knowledge and experience.

The most influential independent membership association of its kind, BDI is the representative voice to industry of the majority of the most qualified top-end product, service, brand, digital and innovative 3D packaging designers in the UK, each with over a decade of experience in sectors such as aeronautics, biotechnology, consumer electronics, food and drink, medical, nanotechnology, telecommunications and transport. A not-for-profit organisation, BDI receives no government funding. Founded in 1993, BDI is financed by its members and managed by 30 regional board directors. BDI member companies generate a collective turnover of over £200 million per annum in a UK design industry representing over £4.5 billion of design-sector turnover and an average £1 billion of export income. Working from HM Government assessments that £1 invested in strategic design generates an ROI for business of £225, its members companies are responsible for generating £5 billion per annum in industry revenue.

BDI’s designers are engaged as key advisors by the world’s largest brand owners to progress their product, service and brand development contracts. They apply new ideas and ways of thinking in support of start-ups, early-stage companies, global corporations, science parks and university technology spin-outs, and advise established portfolio companies on behalf of fund managers and investment teams. They play a crucial role in IP commercialisation, innovation and brand strategy, new market identification and applications, design development, implementation and stakeholder management, and translate science, engineering and technology into tangible products and services businesses can manufacture and consumers wish to buy. With portals in every region of the UK, BDI is concerned with the engagement of these world-class designers as the glue binding innovation and knowledge transfer partnerships together.

BDI’s Innovation Filter™ (which comprises a secure portal for evaluating ideas, trading IP and identifying business partners) and Open Innovation Challenge™ — a knowledge and concept trading vehicle utilised by corporate brand owners and professional Originators — are accredited as best practice knowledge transfer processes by the Institute of Knowledge Transfer. www.ikt.org.uk

BDI’s website — the national database for the UK commercial design industry — receives 1.5 million hits per month from 1.2 million unique visitors per year and contains the UK’s first and most comprehensive design directory. BDI Newswire delivers design and innovation news to 30,000 e-mail subscribers every month free of charge, and reaches an additional 70,000 online visitors world-wide every month. www.britishdesigninnovation.org

STRATEGIC DESIGN is the application of design principles to increase an organisation’s innovative and competitive qualities and enables design decisions to be based on facts rather than aesthetics or intuition, through the analysis of user-centred trends and data. It is regarded as an effective way to bridge innovation, research, management and design.

INDUSTRIAL DESIGN improves the aesthetics, production and marketability of a product by resolving problems of form, usability, ergonomics, engineering, marketing, brand development and sales.

SERVICE DESIGN is the activity of planning and organising people, infrastructures, communication and the material components of a service, in order to improve its quality, the interaction between service provider and customers and the customer’s experience.

© British Design Innovation

For further information telephone + 44 (0) 1273 621378 or email us. Or write to us:

British Design Innovation HQ 9 Pavilion Parade, Brighton, East Sussex, BN2 4AE

National site: www.britishdesigninnovation.org