“Good design is good business.” This sentence was once coined by Thomas J. Watson Jr., the former president of IBM. He believed that design quality pays off because it creates added value for both companies and consumers. This quality can only be determined by comparison, as it is done through an independent and international expert jury like that of the red dot design award.

The red dot institute filters the results of the red dot design award according to different criteria and on request calculates the design value of companies that have received the red dot. It creates project-related analyses of industries and rankings as well as studies of long-term design developments. Thus design research becomes a modern form of economic research.

Market and industry monitoring of this kind goes beyond the qualitative product assessment in the red dot design award and focuses on the financial importance of design and management: independent of their size, design companies develop significantly better than the market. Here design products make a valuable contribution. Small and medium-sized companies achieve a high degree of brand awareness, even if they have a smaller market share. And the red dot design index, whose stock basket contains listed design companies, develops significantly better than benchmark indices. This is clear evidence supporting the finding of Thomas Watson Jr. that “Good design is good business.”