Perhaps the biggest challenge for American design is that design itself is a concept both murky and diffuse, two adjectives that don’t coexist easily with American enthusiasm and impatience. It requires a certain fluidity and tolerance for change that can be hard to manage, especially in a corporate context. For maximum effectiveness, it needs to be part of a bigger system. Even then, it’s maddeningly hard to measure.

But if design really is such a fluid, elusive, and undefinable brew, that makes it just right for the United States. After a stodgy, if powerful, era defined by the ascendancy of the Fortune 500, American business was revitalized by the energy and openness of Silicon Valley. Today’s American design is characterized by all the good qualities of that resurgence.

—Linda Tischler, “The United States of Design,” Fast Company

(Source: Fast Company)