There are some great insights in John Maeda, a design partner at Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, update to his inaugural Design in Tech report:
Maeda presented his second Design in Tech report Monday, again at SXSW. In his wide-lens look at the industry, Maeda doubled down on his original thesis: That big businesses want, need, and will pay for design. He supported his argument with data on mergers and acquisitions: This year, he counted 42 design firms that have been acquired since 2004. Roughly half of those transactions happened in the last year, and Accenture, Deloitte, and IBM—not companies you’d traditionally associate with design—were the main purchasers. “I’ve been arguing for a while that the Fortune 500 companies, they’re interested in design but don’t know how to get it,” Maeda tells WIRED. “The easiest way is through a consulting service. McKinsey, Accenture, or whatever. Consulting firms, in order to build capacity for this demand, have been doing so by acquiring design companies, because they can’t grow them in house.”
