IF INNOVATION IS SO IMPORTANT, WHY DOES EVERYONE WANT IT FOR FREE?

I've been noticing two parallel trends in innovation. As the business press and government focus increasingly on innovation as a powerful business tool, more and more companies are refusing to pay for it.

Most noticably was the Business Week Innovation bake-off, in which Bruce Naussbaum demanded three wealthy design firms design his new innovation mini-magazine pro-bono. A great commentary about this can be found by Michael Bierut here on designobserver.com. A great counter commentary can be found on Naussbaum's blog, but it is so self-serving and disrespectful to professional designers that I refuse to link it.

Following on Naussbaum's leadership there is a new crop of design 'competitions' where the sponsoring companies receive the benefit of every submission's innovative idea and intellectual property, yet provide measly compensation to a few selected participants.

This has often been accepted in academa where design classes may be given a sponsor-specific assignment. Yet, in school the benefits were more evenly divided (students received real-world type experience with clients and relevant design challenges, schools received payments for these services offsetting student tuitions, and the client/companies received some interesting ideas that could rarley be implemented, and were able to form relationships with designers they might decide to hire upon graduation.) Importantly, the academic faculty represented the students' interests when forming sponsored projects.

These new competitions are extremely unbalanced in favor of the sponsoring companies. This is a dangerous trend that devalues and commoditized designers' (last) valuable asset. Competitionas allow companies to receive valuable ideas free of charge and without forming relationships with the creators, emphasizing the superficial over the substantitive. Competitions not only give away ideas which should have been paid for, but they also create a professional standard where new ideas are available for free, and long-term relationships are unnecessary. Two trends which will destroy the design profession without fail

But we can't ignore that the cost to create a competition is virtually nill, and the promotional opportunities are outstanding. Competitions give the sponsoring companies the 'halo' of innovation without the pain of becomming innovative.

As we are now firmly in an economy where new ideas, new intellectual property, is the only property of value. Yet, the process of creating new ideas is full of risk. Risk which senior executives, accountants, and sales people, do not tolerate. By forming desgn competitions, companies maintain 100% control, 100% ownership, and 100% benefit, while reimburing desingers 1% of the value.

Think of the Nike logo, completed for $35 and now worth billions. What prevents that happening to any designer that enters one of these competitions? What prevents that from becomming the industry practice? By entering a design competition designer are giving away their most valuable asset, those that do are paying a price for the entire design industry.

We must, as an industry, boycot company-sponsored design competitions. We must be firm in the belief in the value of paying for professional innovation. Most importantly, we must value our own ideas, innovations and talents.

Links:
CNN article on the importance of creativity.
d3o competition.
Core77 the leading design industry blog and corporate competition supporter.