ABSTRACT
In recent decades, much of the world has witnessed a transformation from manufacturing to knowledge-based service economies. The United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia have become post-industrial societies in which the services sector dominates. While the services sector in China, which is still in the midst of such a transformation, is increasing in economic importance ( International Monetary Fund 2014 ). There is also a growing awareness of the economic benefi ts that innovative digital services can bring to nations and organizations. The US is home to the leading multinational companies in this fi eld, such as Apple and Google. In November 2014, Apple’s brand value reached US$124.2 billion and Google’s US$56.6 billion, making them the world’s fi rst and third most valuable brands ( Forbes 2015 ). The Apple’s App Store, iTunes, and YouTube are illustrative of how intrinsic to our daily lives innovative media services have become. There are also some successful UK companies, such as Zoopla, King, DeepMind, and SwiftKey. King Digital Entertainment is the largest game developer on Facebook, and SwiftKey is famous for its smart prediction technology for easier mobile typing ( Australian Government 2015 ). In Australia, the services sector now employs more than eighty-fi ve percent of the country’s workforce and accounts for eighty-two percent of its real gross value added, which measures the contribution each sector makes to the economy ( Australian Government 2015 ). The Australian Government acknowledges that “[t]here is a growing awareness across the sector that innovation is as important for service business as it is in the manufacturing, mining and agricultural sectors” (Australian Government 2012: 3). In China, the Shenzhen-headquartered premier Internet service portal, Tencent, attained a market valuation of US$50 billion in 2012. In the same year, it was ranked eleventh on Forbes’s list of the world’s most innovative companies ( Forbes 2012 ). Tencent’s WeChat service, which supports location-based social plug-ins, allows users to befriend and chat with nearby strangers through a simple shake of their smartphones. These types of service systems did not exist in the pre-digital era and are
now the focus of creative design. Design was once concerned only with the production of tangible goods, but it is now “a key agent in the production and co-production of useful things and meaningful interactions with the latter gathering infl uence in a post-industrial society” ( Brown 2012: 153 ) .
