FROM THE EDITOR 7
Design works As businesses strive to create greater brand connection and awareness, could using design as a business tool be the silver bullet?
C
asting my eye around the office as I put the finishing touches to this issue of Business Management, I’m confronted by a sea of editors and designers busy beavering away on svelte, aluminium-clad computers. Californiabased Apple has carved out a reputation synonymous with elegant and tactile desktop computers, laptops, MP3 players and, more recently, mobile phones. The distinctive design and build quality of their gorgeous gadgets mean Apple fans, dubbed ‘Applephiles’, think nothing of bedding down for 12 hours with a hot flask outside an Apple store just to be the first to get their eager hands on the latest shiny device. For some, though, its all about style over substance; the decision to pay a premium for one of their computers comes purely down to aesthetics as opposed to processor performance or how much RAM sits inside the silver frame. Like them or loathe them, for Apple, design is a fundamental part of who they are. In this issue’s cover story, Stacey Sheppard unlocks her creative side and speaks to design chiefs at Nokia, Virgin Atlantic and Whirlpool to find out how they use design as a tool to outsmart their rivals and differentiate themselves as brands. “Virgin Atlantic has innovation as a core brand value and uses design as a key competitive differentiator,” says Joe Ferry, the airline’s Head of Design. The article coincides with London’s Design Festival – a nine-day event in the capital that’s expected to draw a crowd of 300,000. With so much creativity on display, you can be sure the corporate world will be foraging for inspiration and new ideas. Also in this issue, we put electric cars under the spotlight; more specifically, the soon-to-be released
Editors Note.indd 7
Nissan Leaf, described as the world’s first massproduced affordable car that’s powered solely by electricity. Despite the misgivings some have over ditching their petrol and diesel vehicles for a car that has to be charged for eight hours every 100 miles, Nissan is predicting buoyant sales. I catch up with Andy Palmer who heads up the Japanese automaker’s electric vehicle (EV) division to press him on the limitations of EVs and whether he agrees with his CEO Carlos Ghosn that all vehicles on our roads will be electric by 2020 On page 70 we have an interview with Giles Andrews, CEO and co-founder of peer-to-peer lending website Zopa. In a fascinating chat, he reveals how the public’s distrust of the banks in the wake of the financial crisis is increasingly persuading people to lend to one another through Zopa. The business model is a simple but intriguing concept that has become a British success story, which is now spawning competitor sites abroad. I hope you enjoy this issue of Business Management. Time to get back to finishing the magazine on my sexy iMac.
“When you ask customers in Europe, the US and Japan, around eight or nine percent are already saying that their next car will be an electric one” – Nissan, pg 34
“People really like working together and have convinced themselves that together they can get themselves a better deal than by dealing with more traditional institutions”– Zopa, pg 70
Julian Rogers Editor
23/09/2010 13:44