Ningbo, 20 September, Theme 1: “Development of Industrial Design and Enterprises.” The event was opened by a representative of the municipal government, emphasising that Ningbo needs to move from a purely manufacturing-based to a knowledge- and design-based economy. For that reason the municipal government supports several industrial design parks in Ningbo, whilst learning from countries world-wide.
Zhu Tao, the director of China Industrial Design Association, outlined the importance of combining academic studies, research and industrial production to strengthen China’s innovative power. In that context he highlighted the risk of inefficiency and mentioned that it is hard to find good examples for such collaboration. He highlighted the importance of cross-border cooperation with universities to provide better training for Chinese students and with industry to gain from foreign experience.
Next was an interesting presentation of Toshiyuki Kita, former chair of the judging committee of the Good Design Award, Japan, which unfortunately was only translated from Japanese into Mandarin… admittedly neither of mine is good enough yet to give any details.
Finally Francois Lenfent, the global design manager of America GE medical treatment, provided an overview on the global approach to design and innovation within GE. He stressed the importance of 
learning within innovation, touching the lead-user concept, and using and utilising existing developments in novel ways. Like the famous Peter Drucker he stressed that innovation is not realised by individuals but through organisations and their cultures. Finally Leufent mentioned that GE nowadays not only focuses on quality but also on green aspects of their products and that the company has launched various eco-friendly initiatives.
After the formal presentations I managed to have a very interesting chat with Francois Lenfent (we seemed to be the only European attendees on that day) about the wide field of sustainable manufacturing in general, but more interestingly within certain parts of GE.
