Closer to home, the Central St Martins art school in London is looking to a new generation of creatives to become the inventors of tomorrow. The school has teamed up with San Francisco design agency Method to create the Method Design Lab, an incubator to help students realise their ideas as finished, commercialised products.

London can join the ranks of Silicon Valley and Tokyo if we invest in our design and creativity, argues Christopher Clarke, co-founder, Epoch PR. Recently, I was talking to a client in London who was providing in-depth help for start-ups. He pointed out that in the past few years we have seen brands capture the imagination of millions of people across the global because of their focus on the user experience, simplicity and great functionality - in a word, design.

 

Born in Ecuador, Santiago Matheus started businesses in four continents before co-founding Method Design Lab in London in March this year. This “accelerator” claims to be the first to take a design-centric, user-experience approach to innovation. He tells GrowthBusiness what he'd wish he'd known when he started.

Method Design Lab has partnered with the international coThinkTank 2011 (CTT11) on Social Business Innovation in Berlin. The conference, September 6 and 7th, investigates the intersection of design and business, highlighting the relevance of collaborative and (co-) creational processes for innovation. The CTT11 will kick-off with a mix of keynotes and workshops to enable a look into the future, including a talk from Method Principal and Method Design Lab co-founder, Santiago Matheus.