A Conran Futures event

Designing, manufacturing and marketing a product is a difficult enough challenge for most creative producers at the best of times – let alone when most investors are tightening their belts and battening down the hatches. Fortunate, then, that we have that global panacea – the Internet – to help us get into new markets the easy way! Networked technologies are starting to help creative folks connect with one another and with potential backers to help them take their ideas beyond the drawing board onto the shelf.

‘Crowdsourced’ and ‘crowdfunded’ products provide new local ways for expertise to scale to a global marketplace, but surely there are still huge pitfalls to avoid?

How can the small, enthusiastic creator put their ideas out there into the public domain whilst still avoiding having their intellectual property being stolen by larger, global corporations? How does ownership of an idea work in this new economy? Doesn’t the designer compromise their creative thought by having to deal with so many stakeholders? Can anything produced this way really be any good – or do we need to rebuild those ivory towers and put the designer firmly back in their place?

The event is taking place on July 14th, at the Conran Building in Shad Thames. We’ve a full complement of guests but we will be sharing highlights of the discussion afterwards, online.