**5. Conclusion**

The work reported in this chapter shed light on the content of job offers in the area of industrial design, analyzed in relation to skills, qualifications and experience required. Through the surveys conducted, empirical data was gathered that supplemented literature review of studies to enhance the attainment of the objectives proposed for the study. Most designer respondents aspire to become professionally independent of their employer, and to create their own business.

This chapter aimed to analyze and understand the employment opportunities for the profes‐ sion of industrial designer and their qualifications that are most conducive to recruitment, adopting a national perspective and an international perspective. To achieve this, a twopronged approach was developed aimed, firstly, to identify pathways to integration in the labour market by industrial designers at the national level, within the Portuguese language space and at the international level, in order to understand the importance of training and other conditioning factors for these paths. On the other hand, work proceeded through surveys to enable the unveiling of the training components seen as critical to employers, and at the same time, this was done to try to envision their future needs in order to provide feedback to the training institutions and enhance effective training and consequently employability. As an example of the pathways of professional affirmation of designers, entrepreneurship, at various stages of the careers of designers, has been studied both from a theoretical standpoint, and considering the socio-economic reality. In this context, and by way of example, the chapter presented a technological project for sustainable design and outlined the contours of a proposal for social entrepreneurship based on that project, aiming to contribute to community devel‐ opment. The work developed and reported in this chapter shed light on a perspective of current job offers in this area, analyzed in relation to the skills, qualifications and experience required. Based on two questionnaire studies made (one questionnaire was addressed to designers active in the Portuguese language space, with 141 respondents, and the other was addressed to heads of enterprises within the Portuguese language space (responses were only collected in Portugal) employing designers, with 19 responses collected), empirical contributions were collected to complement the literature review studies conducted to enhance the attainment of the objectives proposed for the study.

With this work, it was possible to develop an empirical perspective of the challenges facing industrial designers' early career, focusing in particular on designers trained in Portugal. Moreover, the study presents contributions for designers, entrepreneurs, companies and schools that provide training in this area, which may help these groups with tangled interests to pursue their goals more effectively. As civilization makes the transition from the industrial era to one of sustainability, educational leaders around the globe ought to implement a learning system that prepares its young people for life in a unified society. Zinser (2012) provides a starting point to explore what skills and concepts students should be studying to lead the future.
