Designing “Innovation” into Eslite Group for Taipei City Mei-Ting Lin1, Po-Hsien Lin2, and Jun-Liang Chen2 1 Department of Commercial Design, Hsing Wu University, Taiwan [email protected] 2 Graduate School of Creative Industry Design, National Taiwan University of Art, Taiwan [email protected] [email protected] Abstract. After holding 2011 Design at the Edges in Taipei, the global design thinking and styles have entered into Taiwan; design have improved the stan- dards of industries, creative thinking, design capabilities, talents training and living environment, changed multiple levels in Taiwan society, and the design atmosphere in the cities thus enhanced both the people and the knowledge. Therefore to manage the city by design and to improve the people's quality are important factors how Taipei City won the bid to hold 2016 World Design Cap- ital on November 19th, 2013. This study attempted to understand how Eslite Group contributes and influences the city through document analysis of relevant published documents, and realized that the development of Eslite Group may be divided into three stages. First stage is "chain bookstore brand competition pe- riod"; second stage, "publication platform development period"; and third stage, "ambience development period". Through the three stages, Eslite Group devel- oped the initial business philosophy: culture, art, creativity and life. First off, it provides consumers with good shopping services and the comfortable spaces for free reading; next, it provides online digital platform and publish design publications, virtually improved the consumers' aesthetics quality; in recent years, it incorporates new stores with local aesthetics, both the indoor and out- door spaces provide consumers with great ambience and experiences. Over the past 24 years, Eslite Group 's services have invisibly improved the people's quality and taste; a "bookstore", although a commercial space, is also a carrier of culture and knowledge as well as an important symbol of the people's taste of life, which is able to influence the life styles and knowledge development. Es- lite Group has successfully improved the people's taste and influenced the de- velopment and design value of the city. Keywords: Innovation, Taipei City, Eslite Group. 1 Introduction A desirable city is where economy, society, culture and environment develop coor- dinately, which provides good living environment, satisfies material and spiritual needs in life, and where suitable for human to work, live and reside. Speaking of P.L.P. Rau (Ed.): CCD/HCII 2014, LNCS 8528, pp. 650–659, 2014. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014 Designing “Innovation” into Eslite Group for Taipei City 651 "globalization" and "glocalization", Taipei is the center of Taiwan's knowledge circle, the publishing center of "Traditional Chinese", and the city of many colleges and universities which produced great talents and works. If we say the "local specialties" or "local attractions" are Taipei 101, Shilin Nightmarket, National Palace Museum, Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall or the Presidential Office completed in the Japanese era, what continuously improve the city's quality and culture is nothing else but Eslite Bookstore [11]. Eslite Bookstore has created many First in Taiwan over the past 24 years: the first 24-hour bookstore, the first Asia's Best bookstore, the first bookstore that contacts with local readers with diverse store types, and the first company of the cultural and creative service category listed in the "Top 100 Taiwanese Brands" by the MOEA. In order to discuss whether the group has provided critical influences for Taipei City to earn the bid of 2016 World Design Capital, this study analyzed and compiled the past documents related to Eslite Group through document analysis me- thods, and discuss how it influenced the development of the city and how it improved the quality and culture of the city. 2 The Development of Design and Bookstore The development of global economic trends follow the design, thus the terms of aes- thetic economy and creative economy were created. As Taipei was officially ap- proved for 2016 World Design in November 2013, "Adaptive City" is the central focus of Taipei City Government on the city development, striving to shape Taipei City with unique city design while performing the researches and application of "De- sign Evolution and City Upgrade" in the physical urban spaces and virtual informa- tion spaces in the digital era of intellectual environment. In the past decade, the City Government has continued to strengthen the basic infrastructure required for the de- velopment of the design industry, including the establishment of industrial parks, creative tribes, industrial counseling services, cultural and creative design exhibitions and forum activities and so on, with which Taipei has gradually developed into a city full of features and quality. For the people, the development of culture and the eleva- tion of art are the factors to improve the taste of life, however, the most direct factors come from different directions; following the influences of education, the develop- ment of bookstores is also critical. Bookstores may improve the urban quality and culture while providing knowledge. 2.1 Design Development in Taiwan "Culture" is a lifestyle, design is a taste of life, and "creativity" is a kind of recogni- tion through sensations [1]. Today, the nation, cities, industries and the people are facing the impact of "economic globalization", thus, how to incorporate culture into crative design and form urman characteristics by "design localization" to confront the challenge of "market globalization" are the inital issues when we develop future cul- tural and creative industry and improve the city competitiveness by design [2]. 652 M.-T. Lin, P.-H. Lin, and J.-L. Chen In the past, the development of Taiwan design was influenced by many aspects in- cluding policies, education, technology, society and foreign design thinking. Before 1961, Taiwan has gone through the Japanese era and the entering of national govern- ment, the products focused more on the functionality and were mostly for daily uses, practicality was the highest basic principles, and the industries were of OEM stage. Between 1961 to 1981, the industries and economy of Taiwan started to take off, with the support of China Productivity Center, Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Min- istry of Education, Professor Koike Shinji (pioneer of Japanese industry) and Oochi Hiroshi gave speeches in Taiwan, injected new concepts of industrial design into do- mestic industries and deeply influenced the presentation of design style back then. With all kinds of effort, Taiwan earned a place in the international economy as one of the "Four Asian Tigers"; with the rapid changes of the entire economic environment, the industries were in great need of designers, thus facilitated the establishment of design education. From 1981 to 1991, the government has realized the importance of design for the national competitiveness, therefore Industrial Development Bureau, Ministry of Economic, planned and pushed the three five-year projects in order to transform design industry: the first five-year project from 1989 to 1994 focused on the industrial transformation, which triggered the trend of commercial design; commer- cial design and visual design were then gradually separated from fine art and became independent professional fields; design and industrial development had entered the stage of ODM in this ten years. The second five-year project took place from 1995 to 1999, focused on fully improving the product design capabilities. Together with the rise of digital media and internet, the thinking of new media art was introduced to design, personalized and fashion digital design had become the mainstream. The third five-year project started from 1999 and ended in 2004, together with the popular thoughts of "design leads competitiveness", design differentiation and design endem- ism has promoted the cultural and creative industry. Also in 2002, the government promoted the "Challenge 2008－National Development Plan", which was to realize "Global vision, Taiwan realization" with "people-oriented sustainable development" and "global connection, local actions" as strategies. It is obvious that "People + Cul- ture + Feelings + Sustainability + Creativity=Design" had become the most important nature of Taiwanese design, and the industries had also officially entered the OBM stage [4]. 2.2 Development of Chain Bookstores in Taiwan The development of large bookstores in Taiwan started with the establishment of "Senseio Bookstore" in 1960; it started the first transformation trend of Taiwan bookstores for the cultural industry, and was also the first chain bookstore that incor- porated POS logistics system (Fig. 1). In 1980s, "Kinstone Cultural Square" appeared and brought the bookstore industry the first revolution from traditional to modern operations (Fig. 2); in 1990s, "Eslite Bookstore" led the second revolution of books- tore industry, while other bookstores focused on adding more branches, it made its name by the artistic book selection and spatial ambience (Fig. 3). Since the establish- ment in 1989, "Eslite Bookstore" has opened 40 branches in Taiwan and has become Designing “Innovation” into Eslite Group for Taipei City 653 the symbol of Taiwan bookstores; 19 of the 40 bookstores are located in Taipei City, and the bookstores contact with local readers with