The objective of this article is to analyse the designer skills and company needs that are important for design culture development in the coming era of Industry 5.0. For this purpose, 83 SMEs operating in the manufacturing sector in Italy, Spain, Romania, and Poland were analysed. Qualitative and quantita-tive research conducted within the European project Intride let the authors state that in the 21st century context, companies will need to look for designers with specific skills. Based on their study, the authors indicate the most important skills for further development of design culture from the areas of soft, technological, design, digital, and green skills. Further, the authors suggest that it is necessary to con-tinue research on identifying the most needed skills for smart designers in manufacturing and in rele-vant curricula at universities, which might fill educational gaps related to these skills. They propose the concept of the “smart designer” as a design innovation trigger in the manufacturing sector.