Britain's Design Council said it has found the strongest empirical link to date between companies practising good design and marketbeating stock prices, in a study which shows the firms' shares overwhelmingly outperform.
Since the stock market recovery started in March 2003, the Design Index - whose constituents are selected by design award wins and nominations - has risen by 43 per cent and an Emerging Index has gone up by 74.3 per cent.
In that time the FTSE 100 and All Share indexes have grown by 26.2 percent and 32.1 percent respectively.
"Both the Design Index and the Emerging Index outran the FTSE indices not just in the bull market period from March 1995 to March 2000, but also in the three-year bear market which followed. Here they suffered much smaller losses than the market in general," the Design Council said.
The Design Council said many research studies have attempted to prove the connection between design and better business performance.
But by constructing an index based on companies that perform well in design awards and comparing it with their share prices it has been able to quantify the link more clearly.
Each index is recalculated every six months to allow for de- listings, mergers and acquisitions, and since January 2004, this has been carried out by index compiler FTSE International.
"We've found that the difference between design-aware companies and the rest isn't marginal - their share price has outrun the key stock market indices by a full 200 percent," the Design Council said.
The companies were selected for the indexes based on their performance in the Design Business Association (DBA) Design Effectiveness Awards, the awards of international design and advertising education charity D&AD, the Interbrand brand survey and the Design Council's Millennium Products awards.
