The following post is a transcript of a talk by Matthew Manos originally presented in January, 2013 at the Art Directors Club for their StartUp conference in New York. The transcript presented below has been edited in order to represent more accurate statistics regarding verynice as a studio at the time of publication of “How to Give Half of Your Work Away for Free.”

Designers have a lot of tools at their disposal. Whether you are analog, digital or some combination of the two, there is quite a bit to pick from. Let’s think about it for a moment. On the analog side you have paint brushes, reference books, pens, pencils, paper and spray paint. On the digital side you have Wacom tablets, the internet, various Adobe products, QuickTime, Maya, HTML, and CSS. All of these things, while disparate, are united in their ability to help us, as designers, make stuff that solves problems for people. Likewise, these tools can also pave the way to allow for new questions that reveal new problems worth solving.

In the 18th Century, just three decades prior to the birth of Leland Stanford, Adam Smith defined “entrepreneur” as a person who acts as an agent in transforming demand into supply. This specific definition, the concept of an entrepreneur as a supplier of what the customer wants, is in agreement with, many definitions that preceded Smith. However, this was not a philosophy that remained a static definition of the practice. In his book, The Design of Business, Roger Martin speaks of entrepreneurship and innovation as a way of seeing the world “not as it is, but as it could be.” The book goes on to argue that true innovation stems from the exploration of problems that cannot actually be found in history, or proven by data. Perhaps in a more extreme use of language, Erik Reis offers up another take on the practice defining entrepreneurship as the act of creating something new under “extreme uncertainty.” When asked why Apple does not perform user-studies or focus groups, Jobs’ response was that the customer does not know what they want.

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Likewise, in recent years you may have noticed a paradigm-shift-in-progress in the practice of design. The tagline of this event says it well: “there is a mass exodus from Madison Avenue to Silicon Valley.” Marketing and design is shifting significantly, and the role of designers, right now, is drastically different than it was during the days of Mad Men. We are entering a future in which everything around us, from the sidewalks we walk on, to the cities we live in, to the hats on our heads, can be mediums for communication and engagement. Because of this reality, discovering problems and solutions will become a very difficult task.

As we steadily move into the future, the ability to create “designed materials” will become even more accessible than it already has. More and more, clients will turn toward templates, themes, and crowd-sourced solutions instead of individual experts like you and me. I’m sure you’ve already seen that happen, I certainly have, and I am not saying that is a good thing, but I am saying that we should recognize that the role of a designer will soon not be to solely produce materials, but instead to define and discover the root of a problem that cannot be seen with a naked eye. That is a specific component of design, and a unique trait of designers, as people, that truly cannot be templatized.

So maybe, even amongst the plethora of options, design actually needs a new medium for making. We have Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign. What about “Business”? If the role of an entrepreneur has shifted focus away from filling needs, and towards defining new needs, and the role of a designer is clearly following suit, why should business-people and design-people continue to be considered members of two different worlds?

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Leveraging business as a medium for design will not only result in a fruitful, long term, source of new knowledge and discovery, it will also make our own interests and inquiry as designers more approachable and accessible by the general public. Business, like it or hate it, is a part of our daily lives–the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the schools we go to, the people we work for. It is an internationally understood tool that we all have some sort of experience with. Turning that ultra-accessible medium into something that can make new knowledge, then, has the potential of great power for the design community.

When I started verynice several years ago, I wasn’t starting a design studio; I was launching a tool that could help me answer some questions I had. In 2008 I became very interested in all of the disgusting moral dilemmas that dominate the design landscape. Specifically, I became interested in the misuse of the word “social,” and the falsity of intentions amongst “social designers” in the corporate scene. This interest soon evolved into a critical investigation into the cultural relevance of pro-bono, alternative models for philanthropy in social entrepreneurship, and the future of volunteerism. But instead of making a poster about it, or doing a sort of one-liner design project that amplified my disgust… I started a business. verynice has now grown to be a global design, business, and innovation consultancy that gives over half of its work away for free. We have been able to donate the equivalent of over $1,000,000 in design services for over 200 non-profit organizations around the world. Better yet, we have begun to inspire a handful of other design startups to leverage our 50% pro-bono business model, known as the double-half methodology.

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I want to encourage all of you designers and artists to see business as something more than money-making—to instead recognize that it is another medium. To see entrepreneurship as an alternative to Photoshop or Illustrator— something that can be used as a platform to experiment, learn, and disseminate new knowledge in an accessible and sustainable manner.