How does product design from one part of the world transfer across borders and cultures? What challenges do designers face when working with foreign clients? Design students from local universities, along with other Beijing residents, explored how innovation flows in a global marketplace at a discussion Wednesday afternoon between two leading industrial designers from the West who have worked extensively in China.

Chris Hosmer, managing director at the Boston-based design and innovation consultancy Continuum, and Paul Priestman, founding director of the UK design group Priestmangoode, spoke to a room of about 20 people in Crossover Center, a trendy home furnishing store that emphasizes art and design in Beijing's Sanlitun neighborhood.

Both men stressed the importance of respecting local cultures and identities when designing products. "When we're in another culture we really want to respect the culture," said Hosmer, who moved to Shanghai in 2009 when Continuum opened a branch there. "And in fact we have to, because if we don't, we won't have the success."

Priestman said understanding a culture leads to better designs. 'In Australia, they do not have bicycle racks on the trains, they have surfboard racks. And in China, every train, every carriage, has hot water, which is unusual anywhere else in the world," he said. "So we have to understand the culture to design [the trains]."

Priestmangoode, which focuses largely on transportation design, including the interior of trains, is working with CSR Sifang Locomotive in Qingdao on Chinese high-speed trains and this year opened an office there. It also has designed airplane interiors for airlines ranging from Lufthansa to Thai Airways and Kingfisher Airlines.

Designers will bring what they've learned from other parts of the world to create a product that is suitable for a particular culture. But it is still important that every culture remains different, Priestman said.

"I don't like it if I stay in a hotel where I don't know where I am in the world, or every railway station is the same in the world," Priestman said. "I think developing individual style and feel is very important. It just makes life more interesting, and I think it's the way forward."

Hosmer also spoke of what he called "The Third Culture" that allows his team of designers to combine local sensibilities with the broadest possible world view. People who are part of the Third Culture all have significant experience living within two cultures outside the one they were born into.

'And what we've found in people that have this Third Culture makeup are the best at getting very, very deep in understanding consumers and people," Hosmer said.

The talk was part of Beijing Design Week, a festival with a smorgasbord of activities around the city aimed at building a more influential role for China in international design.

Hosmer was particularly enthusiastic about China's potential for becoming a leader in the creative fields.

"The amount of creativity and the amount of energy in China right now in the design field is just amazing," Hosmer said. "The design ego that is perforating right now is going to take off, and it's going to change the way that we think about design or cities or transportation or consumer products or just about everything."

But Priestman cautioned that a cohesive Chinese aesthetic – a "look and feel" – though already emerging in China, will require patience. "Design takes time to show itself," he said.

Will design get left behind, then, in a rapidly developing China?

"I think the fact that design does take a while to take hold and take root, it doesn't change the fact that there is amazing, fantastic, incredible design right now," Hosmer said. "I think it's … the perfect opportunity actually because there are no rules right now."

"If you can imagine it, you can make it happen in China, and that is incredibly liberating."

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