Design Indaba Joins TED and Davos As Top Global Conference

I just returned from South Africa and the Design Indaba conference and if you are interested in creativity, innovation and design, put it on your list of “must-go” annual confabs. Putting an incredible array of brilliant speakers including Stephan Bucher, J. Craig Venter, Han Feng, Piyush Pandy, Li Edelkoort and Christien Meindertsma in one of the world’s most beautiful cities, Cape Town, in a truly emergent country context (the shantytowns are a few miles out of the city-center near the airport), makes for an experience unlike any you’ve had in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum or Long Beach, California for TED. At Davos and TED, people talk about social innovation and designing solutions for the poor but the poor are absent and invisible. At Design Indaba, they are THERE. The problems are in your face. The need for innovation/design-generated economic growth and jobs is clear, not abstract.

Moreover, a creativity conference inside a hugely creative emergent society like South Africa generates a whole new level of ideas and conversation. South Africa has a deep, rich, varied culture that hits you the moment you get off the plane. This is quite unlike Singapore or Shanghai which face you as supremely “modern” first world cities. African culture is a huge resource that is just beginning to be commercialized and sold in world markets (much like India’s). Music is leading, but South African textiles and fashion are amazing, the food is incredible, the graphic and product design unique and appealing, the furniture is different. South Africa has retained it craft traditions while plugging in to the most modern technology. In an interview, I talk a bit about the potential to generate economic growth from the rich South African culture.