Overview
The Design for the New China Markets Conference is an executive forum hosted by the IIT Institute of Design and the State Intellectual Property Office, People's Republic of China. It is intended for leaders interested in the design and development of products and services for China.
Western companies interested in selling products and services to the new China market are discovering that, as Chinese consumers become more sophisticated, their development teams must compete more aggressively to create offerings that better fit the Chinese culture and living patterns. Companies who thought it was sufficient simply to understand the "the China market" are shocked to find there are actually several China markets, and that their offerings need to be created with the same care and sophistication as the offerings they create for the sophisticated and diverse markets in the West.
“Western companies are discovering that increasingly sophisticated Chinese consumers are demanding that products and services be designed around their own culture and living patterns. ”
On the other side of the world, Chinese companies have discovered design. Like in America in the middle of the 20th century, the dominant attitude among most companies is that design is about styling and is used at the end of the development process to make communications, products and environment look better. However, there is already a rapid transformation in the use of design among advanced Chinese companies. They have already pushed past styling and have moved on to designing rich and highly customized user experiences.
Often the stage of design maturity and the economic growth rate of China today is compared to that of Japan in the 1950's, or Korea in the 1970's. At one level this is accurate; however, there is one huge difference: China has a very large and rapidly growing middle class that will almost certainly become the dominant markets for products and services in the near future.
Who should attend
- Executives interested in developing culturally sensitive products and services for China
- Design managers of corporations developing innovations for the China market
- Design professors in China and in programs interested in global design issues
The meeting is by invitation only and will be limited to 150 participants.
