Design for designing: envisioning an innovation&creativity center for the emergence of the national design competence

This work reports the case study of the preliminary efforts and consequent conceptualization of an innovation & creativity center. Specifically, this work focuses its intervention in the Caucasian region, where strengthening non-oil-centered entrepreneurship was defined as a priority by the government, and Design competence is considered one of the primary drivers of national investment. In this context, the cooperation between two international universities has allowed for creating the research and development space for studying a solution that could support local entrepreneurship through the integration of design skills in the territory. From preliminary research data, the strengthening of non-oil-centered entrepreneurship through design in the country required overcoming two main challenges: creating a dialogue between the existent non-oil product development know-how, fragmented in numerous industrial clusters, and integrating design skills provided by a new local school of design for new product development. Therefore, if from one side the country is building the design capacity through educational intervention, from the other it requires a dedicated function that integrates educational outputs with the local entrepreneurial system for new product development. With these premises, the study focused on the preliminary conceptualization of an innovation & creativity center that could enable the collaboration between design teams and local industrial realities, since innovation & creativity centers often function as bridges between creative concepts and entrepreneurial outputs. This work therefore describes the logic of functioning of the innovation & creativity center, its organizational model for enabling a design-driven reinforcement of local entrepreneurship, and the first steps required to start creating a heterogeneous community of stakeholders willing to participate in the intent realization of the country.