The eThekwini Municipality, Economic Development and Investment Promotion Unit’s Sector Programme invite all furniture and product designers as well as manufacturers to apply towards the Good Design Competition.
The competition is geared at SMME’s or Start-Ups looking to further their understanding of innovation in business and manufacturing, and apply radical design in product development.
Speaking on the project Anasuyah Pather, the Programme Manager for the Furniture Sector expressed her excitement about the project, “This project is an innovative way to bring together creativity in design with manufacturing excellence-two spheres that seldom intersect in the industrial landscape currently.”
Anasuyah went on to share that the aim of the programme is to “explore the possibilities (of these two spheres) collaboration and what it can mean in real economic terms for both sectors; thereby opening new areas of production for manufacturers and broaden the scope of career for designers.”
From the entries, a final selection of five furniture designers will be paired with five manufacturers to create a prototype, business plan and marketing strategy for the prototype. The competition runs over four weeks and the successful candidates are expected to attend one workshop-day weekly over the month of August 2018.
The full-day workshop consists of team challenges, presentations, videos, R&D as well as mentorship. All candidates of the competition will receive intense and highly interactive training on Design Thinking, Business Model Canvases, Lean Start-up Methodology, Innovation Processes and Marketing Principles.
The overall winners and runners-up will each win a grand prize to the value of R7000.00 after a pitching den to a jury of industry leaders, against four other teams.
[Adapted from Good Design press release.]
