Abstract

This article elaborates on economic parameters affecting industrial design and its education value in a knowledge-based and digital era influenced by ideology that decoupled innovation from productivity since 1970s. It assists updating their value proposition from the outside in with economic contextualization based greatly on data from United States as industrial age leading exemplar, and United Kingdom, Europe and Australia who echoed American trends, however, were delayed with their information technology adoption. A review of economic theory and practice showed productivity changes altered growth, labor and society with incremental rather than radical innovation. A technology and skill bias economy created technological discontinuity and a productivity paradox with two correlating and interconnected realities. Long-term manufacturing and occupations were affected by short-term hollowing out of standard skilled jobs and deregulated markets. A push to maximize productivity output by outgrowing costs of capital and labor input with production offshoring and shareholders profit resulted on nations and markets growth appearing to reach point of saturation. Periods of great financial profit without actual prosperity collapsed and restarted again. However, most citizens have not benefited from that recovery since profit still comes out from short-term expectation instead of long-term fundamentals and real market.