I am spending part of this week in Milwaukee attending ICIS. This morning's paper carried an
article titled 'Designs on a creative career'. The state has lost 15% of their manufacturing jobs in the last seven years. Meanwhile, demand for industrial designers have gone up and they get paid 29.5% more than the average wage of all occupations. The same trend should be seen in other sectors such as the software sector. As a result, we could see the launch of the design economy where IP management, distributed collaborative work technologies and skills could be crucial.