Spec work will not go away. It sells itself on hope. It gives hope to a designer without other means of making an income that he/she can have a chance of winnin

Spec work will not go away. It sells itself on hope. It gives hope to a designer without other means of making an income that he/she can have a chance of winning the work. There is a place for spec work that cannot be completely annihilated. What startups need to understand is that by asking "how cheap can I be", they are short changing themselves the true value that a designer can bring to their team: true creativity. Building the right design for your product requires a process of communication, of revision, of going back-and-forth, of synergetic teamwork. Because the job of a designer is to think of the things, use cases, scenarios, etc., that you haven't and wouldn't have thought of without his/her help, and then design up your product to be better than what you had imagined. That's the true value of creativity will differentiate your product. This creativity cannot be bought through an one-way-communication - spec work. There are 6561 photography iPhone apps and only 1 Instagram. Design is not a commodity. Startups should ask themselves if they want to be like Instagram or the 6560 other photography apps in deciding whether to invest in design.