We know this because in 2017, a consortium paid PwC to put a dollar figure on the design disciplines’ contribution to the economy. They added it all up, revealed the result at a launch in Wellington, and — according to those in the room — watched the Minister of Finance tell them not to look to the government for help. We haven’t done the sums since.
There has been another similar attempt. Last year, the economist Shamubeel Eaqub found the creative sector contributed $12.9 billion to GDP in 2022, and that most of that value came from people working inside companies we’d never think to call creative. Toi Mai, the Workforce Development Council, commissioned the work — but was wound up at the end of 2025.
Ten years on from the 2016 calculation, if design has maintained its 4.2% share of the larger economy, the figure could be closer to $18 billion. The point is that nobody’s been counting.
Designers aren’t being pushed down like tall poppies, but they are in danger of being overshadowed by the economic and social problems they could be solving.
That’s the strange thing about our design industry. With a couple of notable exceptions, we don’t seem to have the confidence we’ve earned from doing the mahi.
“We don’t seem to have the confidence we’ve earned from doing the mahi.”
Engineer-designer-slash-businesspeople like Peter Beck, who founded Rocket Lab, prove we can be very good at it. We’re just not so good at remembering it. Or at encouraging more of it. The country that produced Halter, Rocket Lab, Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, Fisher & Paykel Appliances, Xero, Icebreaker and Emirates Team New Zealand could do with more companies like them.
We do count some of this. This month, the technology sector celebrated a record $20 billion in revenue at the New Zealand Hi-Tech Awards, a figure the industry measures and publishes annually. A good deal of that value is design wearing a different badge: Fisher & Paykel Healthcare and Xero, two of the biggest names on the list, are also among the most design-led companies we’ve built. We count the revenue every year. The design enabling it, so far, once a decade.
“We count the revenue every year. The design enabling it, so far, once a decade.”
Which is why the Designers Institute of New Zealand (DINZ) Best Awards’ Value of Design Award matters. It’s the closest thing we have to a public record of what design does for us beyond making things look good and function well.
It doesn’t reward style for its own sake. It recognises New Zealand companies whose commercial and social performance is measurably down to design; businesses that grew because they treated design as a function, not a decoration. Past winners are a roll call of Kiwi businesses punching above their weight: Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, Ethique, Vessev, Goodnature and Emirates Team New Zealand.
Full disclosure: I’ve judged this category, and it’s not always been easy. Often, the broad scope and the criteria forced us to compare companies with nothing in common — a public company in its third decade of building medical devices against a year-old brand growing 400 per cent off a tiny base.
The younger firm tended to win on the maths and lose on the harder question of whether it had built something that would last.
We’d have long debates about societal and environmental impact versus commercial performance. There was rarely a clean answer, but the experience around the table usually teased one out.
The award is learning and growing, like the products and services it champions. This year, the criteria have changed to reward design innovation and impact with a broader scope.
Value of Design recognises design-led performance that is sustained and material. Emerging Value, a new initiative, recognises earlier-stage businesses, products, or services with growth curves that climb steeply from small beginnings and that contribute to the community and environment.
And the supreme awards, the Purple and Black Pins, weigh value and values: not only performance and profit but also sustainable and social outcomes, and the people driving them — which is exactly why you should enter.
Every finalist adds a line to a public record we haven’t properly totted up in a decade.
So consider this an urgent invitation. If a product, a service, a brand or an experience you’ve built has made a difference, enter. Not because you need a trophy, but because the case for doing better by design in this country is made by example, and yours is one of them.
We’re good at design. We’re also good at forgetting we’re good at it. Entering will help us remember.
Credit
By Simon Coley. First published in BusinessDesk, May 2026. Republished here as the canonical home — set the canonical link to BusinessDesk’s URL if their terms require it.
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