‘Think Design for Competitive Advantage’, Murray Live Event – Let’s Take a Deeper Look!

Traditionally, design has focused largely on how something looks, beyond that, it now represents a dynamic concept that encompasses how businesses can adapt their problem-solving methods to thrive in a rapidly evolving environment, creating maximum impact and shareholder value.

Our recent live event ‘Think Design for Competitive Advantage’ brought together innovative speakers and design-led businesses for a day of exciting insights and ideas. Speakers from Microsoft and Siemens, as well as bespoke design studios, networked with delegates from a range of industries all with one thing in common: they recognise the importance of design strategy in business.

Creating Desire

Ray Stenning, Design Director at Best Impressions got the day started by discussing the importance and power of design. “Design has a duty to inspire, it’s the start of communication on every level, and it has the ability to invoke an intuitive response.” Recognising that design is one of the fundamental building blocks of a good business is only the beginning, once a business places design at the forefront of everything it does, it can be used as a valuable wealth-generating tool.

Wearing the Brand

Making sure that design works, and that a design project delivers is something Jag Sihra knows about. Her talk bridged the gap between design business, embodying the concept of a design-led strategy. “Great design is about balance, it’s resolving the tensions between form and function, art and business, people and brand. From her work with British Airways in Customer Experience, Jag reinforced the importance of design for a reason. “Design is about doing the right thing for the right reasons. It isn’t just about decoration, it’s about striving to anticipate the best answer to a real brand need, in a way that works best for the business and the customer. Good design is always about fit for purpose, people and context.”

With the fundamentals of design covered off by Ray and Jag, it was over to Prof Alan Norbury, Chief Technologist at Siemens to talk about the adoption of digitalisation in practice

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Half of all the data in the world has been created in the last 12 months, but most of that data is not being used to its potential.

The world we live in has changed dramatically in the past few years. Resources are becoming limited which means that we have to do more with less. In other words, we need to become more efficient and flexible so we can drive sustainable innovation. But how do we do that? The answer is – data or information. There are endless possibilities that can allow us to overcome our challenges by harnessing the power of the infinite amounts of data surrounding us.

Data can be used by combining the real world with the digital world, companies like Siemens are at the forefront of combining these two worlds, enabling a continuous loop of optimisation.

This concept, which involves creating a ‘digital twin’ can be used to develop products and services across all industries. The process involves creating an entirely digital version of what is being developed, speeding up the process of development and ensuring that the final, real-world design and prototype is perfect the first time. Most manufacturers already use a digital design process for products, but the real innovation comes from introducing a digital world production or manufacturing process, combining the two and using the data from trials.

“Digitisation provides the required information and helps make the right decisions.”

Design in a New Era of Ai

With the subject of digitisation fresh in everyone’s mind, it was Richard Potter’s turn to take the stage with his focus on Artificial Intelligence.

“This is a story that has only really been taking place in 2023, if you were to go back to this time last year, people weren’t talking about generative AI. But we haven’t seen a shift of this scale in the tech industry before.”

For context, we needed 16 years for mobile phones to reach 100 million users, 7 years for the internet to reach that figure, and 4.5 years for Facebook and Chat GPT? A mere 2 months. We’re at the beginning of a technology shift and it’s important that we understand tech like Chat GPT so that we can properly use it to kick-start a productivity revolution.

The world has changed over the past 3 years, no more so than the way in which we have become digitised, and what we do with that digitisation is up to us.

With an incredible amount of insight from our speakers’ talks, next it was time for break-out sessions which gave our attendees a chance to discuss some of the subject matter and how they apply to their own businesses.

These discussions brought up some valuable insights into the different issues faced across industries and allowed for reflection on how best to approach them.

Design-led strategy is such a broad and varied subject, and although our event only scratched the surface, there is so much value in what was discussed on the day.

To be part of the conversation, and view talks from Microsoft, Siemens and more, get in touch with us – marketing@murray-uniforms.co.uk