Abstract
A national economy consists of a complex array of private and public sector organizations supported by physical infrastructure and a set of policy and legal frameworks and legislation. The infrastructure and policy frameworks are intended to support and encourage wealth creation and have developed or evolved over a long time period. Government policy is created at a variety of spatial scales to regulate, support and enhance wealth creation. The policy environment that supports and also regulates private sector activities is reactive and proactive: proactive as it attempts to lay down the conditions for wealth creation and reactive as it responds to events, for example, company closure, recession or enhanced competition. In many instances policy is developed that is built upon fashionable theories popularized by consultancy companies and gurus (Bryson 2000). There are many drivers behind the formulation of a policy response: fashion, peer pressure, copying, response to a crisis and the vision of an individual or group of individuals. In most cases, policy formulation is intended to address a particular problem or is driven by a political agenda that might be informed by the latest policy fashion.
In early stages of manufactures, it is mechanical fitness that is the object of competition: as society advances it is necessary to combine elegance with fitness; and those who cannot see this must send their wares to the ruder markets of the world, and resign the great marts of commerce to those of superior taste who deserve a higher reward.
(Wornum: [1851], 1970: I)
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© 2010 John R. Bryson
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Bryson, J.R. (2010). Industrial Design, National Competitiveness and the Emergence of Design-Centred Economic Policy. In: Rusten, G., Bryson, J.R. (eds) Industrial Design, Competition and Globalization. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230274037_2
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