Six months ago, I wrote about India's draft design policy, posted on the web with requests for feedback - at that time, I noted that the United States is probably the only developed nation without a national design body or council.
Indian newsreports declare the launch of the National Design Policy in early 2006, accompanied by a logo for Brand India, for use by manufacturers of products approved as good design. In addition, in today's news, this article states,
...only those manufacturers who meet minimum design standards will qualify to use the logo.
[...]
The policy will ensure that there is budgetary support to create awareness about designs, setting up NID-type institutes, and creating a brand India logo with certain quality parameters.
[...]
The attempt would be to position `Designed in India' as a label that assures quality and utility. This could be in conjunction with other labels - `Made in India' and `Served from India'.
Juxtaposed to this announcement, is this recent article from the EETimes, titled "The politicization of innovation" which states,
As the competitive threat from Asia — especially China — grows, innovation emerged in 2005 as a key technology and economic issue in America.
Policy makers staged high-profile summits to explore ways to restore U.S. innovation in response to declining competitiveness and the aging of the U.S. engineering profession. They also published reports with dire warnings about the future of U.S. innovation.
Lawmakers responded late in the year by introducing legislation designed to promote U.S. innovation. Among the legislative goals of the "National Innovation Act of 2005" introduced by Sens. John Ensign (R-Nev.) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) on Wednesday (Dec. 15) are: increasing investment in basic research; improving science and technology talent; and developing a robust innovation infrastructure.
Promising news, to be sure, for retaining America's competitive advantage, but ironically, it ends with this sentence,
The fear that the U.S. high-tech industry's best days are behind it is palpable. Said one worried industry executive active in the push for government help, "I just don't want to lose it on our watch."
Is the timing ripe for the US design industry, and august bodies such as IDSA and AIGA, not to mention leading educational institutions such as Stanford, CMU, RISD et al to come together and push for an American Design Policy, or will the US fall behind in the innovation sweepstakes as the EETimes predicts?
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