My family recently moved into a new home. After getting the essentials for survival out of boxes, we left everything else in the garage. After a few weeks, I was ready to move everything from our garage to its final resting place in the basement. I had a lot of boxes and little time. My intent was to make as few trips as possible from the garage to the basement. To accomplish this, I consolidated items from several boxes in order to make the journey with fewer, fuller loads of items. However, as I was consolidating my loads, I began to wonder how much each box could hold before collapsing from the weight within, or before I would be unable to carry the extra weight. I began to consider the risk associated with this approach. I had limited time, weight capacity and patience. I thought about my situation in the following way:

Intent—to make as few trips as possible
Ambition—maximum number of objects in each box as possible
Risk—the box might break

By pushing my threshold for risk and increasing each load to maximum capacity, I took eight trips and roughly an hour to complete my task—not bad! Much better than carrying the original 14 boxes from the garage to the basement.

Looking back on this experience I began to see parallels between this and corporate innovation initiatives. How often do we see organizations with high hopes of changing the game within their industries, only to find they lack the ability to take the risks necessary to satisfy their ambition?

Read complete article
 

DMI’s first events, held in the mid-1970's at a Boston bar called Kronig's, developed from a small group of Design Managers confessing the challenges they were facing in their roles, and sharing solutions, methods and empathies over a few beers. DMI Night Out continues this tradition of like-minded people sharing their knowledge around current issues facing design leaders.

"These are not business as usual times"
Join the conversation, face-to-face, live in your community at DMI Night Out in February 2012. A good old-fashioned roundtable (which might not be a table or round) that will be an honest discussion on what you are doing to lead over, around and through these challenging times. Come share what you're doing more of... less of… in this new normal business of design.

Hosted by local DMI members, DMI Night Out is a local source of support and partnership for today's critical issues, connecting cross-disciplinary design and business leaders in their local communities—a local gathering of DMI members and the extended community of design leaders, with the goal of fostering community, collaboration, and content that informs and inspires.

Join in on one of the many DMI Night Out events planned. DMI Members and nonmembers are welcome:

More information
 
 

Helsinki has been designated the ICSID/IDA World Design Capital 2012 and DMI's conference will be part of a year-long roster of events.
 
Registration is now open for this world-class leadership event! Register by February 17 and save!
 
More information
Register now!
 
Optional pre-conference seminar:
Design Research and the Customer-driven Innovation Strategy
Darrel Rhea, CEO, 2nd Road, North America
April 23-24, 2012, Helsinki, Finland

Optional post-conference seminar:
Team Dynamics: Resourcing for Success (A special one day seminar)
Dieter Reuther, Operations Consultant, Cast Collective
Sabrina Jetton, Design Consultant, Cast Collective
April 27, 2012, Helsinki, Finland
 
 

BALANCING EXTREMES:
The tensions in design
Design/Management Thinking 24 Conference
June 19-20, 2012
Portland, Oregon, USA

Conference co-chairs:
Casey Lehner, Global Design Operations Director, NIKE
David Thorpe, Creative Director, INDUSTRY PDX
Karen Reuther, President, DMI

No longer competing in an either or world, leaders are learning to break through classic tradeoffs for ultimate success in getting the best products, services and experiences to market. Navigating tempo, talent and risk, design leaders are finding the balance through tapping into a diversity of tools, techniques and processes to move more adaptively than ever.
 
Join us as DMI's West Coast conference moves to downtown Portland, Oregon, at the beautifully renovated Gerding Theatre at the Armory. DMI's recent conferences in Seattle and San Francisco have established this event as today's most forward-looking, dynamic event on design leadership. Look for updates at dmi.org, facebook or twitter.
 
More information
Register by March 26 and save!
 
   

DMI appoints ten new Advisory Council members
 
DMI is proud to announce that ten new advisors, representing a broad international spectrum of DMI's audience, have been appointed to DMI's prestigious advisory council. These ten advisors were carefully selected by the newly formed Governance Committee and appointed by the DMI Board of Directors, with the goal of more closely reflecting the current DMI membership profile and increasing the diversity of representation. They will serve a three year term from 2012-2014.
 
The DMI Advisory Council helps the organization, the Board of Directors, and the president achieve the vision and mission of the Institute. The council members serve as a bridge between DMI and its constituents in the community and complement and strengthen governance functions of the Board. As advocates of the Institute they extend the reach of DMI, and bring outside support, new perspectives, and expertise.

• Jaana Beidler, Senior Color and Material Design Manager, Nokia
• Charles Bezerra, Executive Director, GAD'Innovation/Brazil
  
• John Bound, Head of Innovation Development, Innovation RCA, Royal College of Art
  
• Sally Brazier, Director, CEOSTRA Ltd.
  
• Steve Frank, Marketing Director, ThoughtForm, Inc.
  
• Chris Hosmer, Managing Director, Design Continuum
  
• Casey Lehner, Global Design Operations Director, Nike, Inc.
  
• Marco Steinberg, Strategic Design Director, Finnish Innovation Fund
  
• Youngjin Yoo, Director, Center for Design+Innovation, Fox School of Business, Temple University
  
• Surya Vanka, Principal UX Manager, Microsoft Corporation
  

DMI enthusiastically welcomes these new council members and we look forward to their participation, ideas, and contributions!
 
 

2011 Tsinghua-DMI International Design Management Symposium, Hong Kong
 
DMI recently partnered with Tsinghua University of Beijing in developing a very successful Design Management Symposium in Hong Kong on December 3-5, 2011. The symposium drew over 300 attendees from 18 countries, with 88 paper presentations and 66 paper sessions representing 55 universities. Thomas Lockwood, past president of DMI, and Cai Jun, professor of Design Management at Tsinghua University, led the conference. According to Gabriel Y. L. Tong, Founder, Innovation and Design Management Association, "The Symposium marked a prominent milestone by kicking off a new wave of design management studies in Hong Kong and Mainland China. I am proud to be one of those who participated and contributed to the success of the event."
 
Later this year DMI will produce a major international educational conference. Look for updates on this important event very shortly on dmi.org, facebook or twitter.
 
 

Webinar:
 
Research Is NOT the Enemy
Jonathan Asher, Senior Vice President, Perception Research Services
January 18, 2012, 1PM ET
 
"Why bother testing? It only wastes time and money. And the results will either tell us what we already know—or they'll be wrong!" Although research is now a well-integrated part of the package design process, there are still some skeptics, some uninformed among the teams that guide design projects—be they designers, marketers, or even researchers.

But to ensure that the best designs make it to market, it's important to be vigilant about research so that it can be a useful tool that ensures success, rather than simply being a costly, time-consuming source of criticism.
More information
 
 

Seminars:
 
Team Dynamics: Resourcing for Success
Dieter Reuther, Operations Consultant, Cast Collective
Sabrina Jetton, Design Consultant, Cast Collective
March 8-9, 2012, Chicago, USA
April 27, 2012, Helsinki, Finland
 
Through insightful presentations, interactive dialogues, and hands-on activities, you will learn how to analyze, diagnose, and improve the chemistry of your project teams, optimize project outcomes, and increase profitability.
More information
 
Building Great Internal Design Organizations
Thomas Lockwood, PhD, Editor, DMI Review; Founding Partner, Lockwood Resource
April 12-13, 2012, San Francisco, USA
 
"Excellent packaging of all the relevant elements of design management that experienced design managers are looking for."
—John L. Guenther, LWS Industrial Design Competency Manager, Hewlett-Packard
More information
 
Design Research and the Customer-Driven Strategy
Darrel Rhea, CEO, 2nd Road, North America
April 23-24, 2012, Helsinki, Finland
 
"This is the single most valuable, relevant, timely and enabling seminar that I have ever attended. In just two days, we learned tools and methods that will be immediately usable in my job."
—Jeff Lopes, UX Director, Autodesk, Inc.
More information
 
 

The Five Most Dangerous Ideas
Scott Berkun, Author

Originally presented during DMI's Design/Management Thinking 23 Conference, "Make it Happen," June 21-22, 2011, Seattle
 

 
Scott took the five most dangerous and interesting ideas heard during the conference, and in his remarks explored their significance, built on their meaning, and provoked participants with a new way of thinking about their work.
View the video
 
Look for another Editor's Choice video mid-January! Check dmi.org, facebook or twitter for updates.
 

Holistic Product Design

By Samantha Starmer, Experience, Design, and Information Architecture Leader, REI
DMI Review, Vol. 22, No. 4, 2011
 
Product concepts and services can suffer from siloing, just as knowledge within a company can. We need to think more holistically if we want to design products that offer distributed, yet connected, services.
View complete article.
 

Call for Papers: 2012 Design Management Journal
Theme: Design Leadership
The 2012 issue of DMI's annual peer-reviewed publication, the Design Management Journal, will focus on Design Leadership. We are now seeking submissions of a broad range of papers within this overarching theme.
 
How is design being led; by executives, design managers, staff, external partners, or by consumers? How has design thinking evolved within organizations, in relation to formal design departments? What are effective ways to structure and source design in distributed and collaborative environments? Abstracts are due January 31, 2012. Please submit your proposals to editor@dmi.org.
More information

Call for DMI Review Article Submissions:
September 2012 Issue: Design Entrepreneurship
To what degree is design providing an entrepreneurial approach to problem solving? Who leads the process of design for change, and who is responsible for the results? What is the overlap between design, business strategy and change management? To what extent should design managers be supporting entrepreneurship, business transformation, and seek to become "business engineers?" Please send article proposals by March 1 to editor@dmi.org
 
 

DMI events

Global connections