CROWD SOURCING AND THE DEATH OF INNOVATION

The hot new buzz-word, in the non-practicing, business press (read Business Week) is Crowd Sourcing. In other words, interfacing with your customers to encourage them to create new products and services for free. There are a number of ancecdotal examples of crowd sourcing successes (T-shirt makers, corporate competitions, user-studies spun to get press).

I believe this is another parallel trend adding toward the death of the design profession. Two other trends which are contributing to this crisis are globalization, bundling design with manufacturing, and the trend towards pro-bono design bake-offs.

I have been asking myself why all of a sudden this focus on crowd sourcing? Why isn't the business press talking about the cross-functional innovation teams that are really performing for our companies and clients. Here are a couple of theories, none of which bode well for designers:

1) Cross-functional, real world, daily grind stories about designer are boring. The press is looking for the next-hot-trend and it's crowd sourcing. Regardless of it's performance it's more interesting and appealing to readers than another profile of five hard-working designers putting in long hours to make something great.

2) It's the closest thing we have to open source. The software industry has embraced open source and they're still around. Why can't it be the same for product design? With low-cost 3D rendering packages, new product design/invention can be easily distributed to amateurs and students.

3) Society is changing. This, I'm afraid, is an important trend. I think the world is moving away from a respect and appreciation of individuals' inherent talents. 10 years ago I would see clients appreciating that designers had unique skills that they did not have. Today, I see clients take the attitude that they are as qualified to do design work and nothing separates the professional from amateur.

4) The design profession has failed to educate the business world. The failure of IDSA and PDMA to generate into the business press and corporate culture a fundamental respect and value for design allows new trends, like crowd sourcing, to supplant designer as the primary resource for business creativity. Instead, IDSA, in it's pandering to educators and rich design firms, has failed in its fundamental mission.