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Home > DMI Publications > DMI News > Past eBulletins > April 2009

April 2009 eBulletin

	Re-Thinking Conference Co-Designers
	Roger Martin		Darrel Rhea

The challenges we are currently experiencing in the world are enough to alarm even the hardiest of souls. Sitting back and watching is simply no longer an option. Re-Thinking ... Design is an opportunity for the community of smart designers to collaborate on the leadership role that design should take to shape our future.

You’ll hear not just contemporary theory, but practical examples of top business leaders demonstrating how they are changing the economy, healthcare, technology, and culture. The conference will culminate in a call-to-action to the design leadership community—for social re-thinking, and a challenge to re-design that which is most important to each of us.

Featured at Re-Thinking:

Re-Thinking design and organizational transformation
Claudia Kotchka, Vice President of Design, Innovation & Strategy, Procter & Gamble
Bill Buxton, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research
Moderator: Roger Martin

Re-Thinking design consultancies: scope, convergence and fertile ground
Tim Brown, CEO, IDEO
Sohrab Vossoughi, Founder & President, Ziba Design, Inc.
Jesse James Garrett, President, Adaptive Path
Moderator: Thomas Lockwood

Re-Thinking client/customer relationships
Robert Brunner, Founder & Partner, Ammunition LLC; Chief Designer, Fuego North America

Re-Thinking the design of social networking
Nancy Dickenson, Senior Director of User Experience, eBay
Moderator: Darrel Rhea

Re-Thinking ... business
Scott Cook, Founder and Chairman of the Executive Committee, Intuit, Inc.
Moderator: Roger Martin

Re-Thinking and re-designing business strategy
Tony Golsby-Smith, Founder & CEO, 2nd Road
Jeanne Liedtka, Professor of Business Administration, University of Virginia - Darden Business School
Moderator: Roger Martin

Re-Thinking design: the fog of strategy
Mark Rolston, Chief Creative Officer, frog design, inc.

Re-Thinking environmental design: succeeding with ambitious social innovations
Deanne Beckwith, Advance Development Consultant, Programmable Environments, Herman Miller Inc.
Chauncy Bell, Chief Operating Officer, CareCyte
Moderator: Darrel Rhea

Re-Thinking design for virtual and physical experiences
Craig Hanna, Principal/Chief Creative Officer, Thinkwell Design

Re-Thinking material consumption through designing with technology
Kurt Heikkila, President, Wild River Consulting; President and CEO, Tundra Composites, LLC

We’ve designed Re-Thinking … Design around the idea of having “strategic conversations.” Conversations that inform, inspire, and answer difficult questions. Expect an exchange of ideas with thought leaders. Expect different points of view to challenging questions. Expect to learn. Rather than one-way presentations, expect to engage in two-way conversations. And expect to participate in the dialogue and take home an entirely fresh perspective!
Learn more...

Sponsorship Information
 

New DMI/Allworth Press Book:
Corporate Creativity: Developing an Innovative Organization
Edited by Thomas Lockwood, PhD, DMI President; and Thomas Walton, PhD, Editor, Design Management Review

Corporate Creativity is the ultimate guide for executives and managers looking to increase creativity and innovation in their companies. This anthology of provocative essays, drawn from the pages of Design Management Review and Design Management Journal, explores personal, team, and organizational creativity. The collection includes essays on:

• developing a more innovative organization
• taking risks that will succeed and improve your business
• improving employees’ creative abilities to further innovation
• designing teams that will promote efficiency
• integrating design into corporate culture
• crafting management processes to fuel creativity, innovation, and customer delight

Corporate Creativity combines case studies and innovative advice that will both inspire and instruct to create a complete guide for cultivating the creative process. This book is absolutely essential for innovation and business leaders, designers and design managers, and forward-thinking students.

"This is an outstanding collection of thinking about not only the importance of right-brain thinking, but how to develop, nurture, and manage models for sustained innovation."—Daniel H. Pink, author of A Whole New Mind

The other books in the DMI/Allworth series are Building Design Strategy (published January 2009), and Design Thinking: Integrating Innovation, Customer Experience and Brand Value (coming summer 2009).

In Memory of Karen Freeze: 1945-2009

DMI regrets to inform the DMI community that Karen Freeze, DMI Senior Research Fellow, passed away on March 19 after a long illness. Karen, together with Earl Powell, was the driving force behind the development of the DMI case study program, and was the author of many of DMI’s best-known studies.

Karen was formerly Director of Research for DMI, had been a Research Associate for Harvard Business School, and most recently was Affiliate Faculty at Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington. Since 2005, Karen worked as a Central and Eastern European coordinator and PhD program advisor for the Netherlands Foundation for the History of Technology Tensions of Europe Program. She received her PhD from Columbia University, and her BA from the University of Washington.

Karen was a superb writer and possessed a tremendous intellect. All of us at DMI pass on our condolences to Karen’s family, friends, and associates. For information about memorial service and memorial donations, visit www.dmi.org/dmi/html/aboutdmi/karen_freeze.htm

Design Leadership Series Webinars
Sponsored by Microsoft
Digital Service Design
Wednesday, April 15, 1pm EDT (New Date)
Brian Gillespie, Director of Strategic Design, Molecular

	Brian Gillespie

Survival in the global economy has driven many companies to evolve from being simple creators of products to being creators of added value by providing sophisticated services that support their customers’ use of their products. Digital service design supports new ways to integrate real products with virtual experiences, and create entirely fresh, new services and experiences.

Digital service design used to be about content and architecture, but now it is about experience. To imagine the many connections that can be made, design managers need to have a solid understanding of their target audiences’ digital daily life, and the motivations that convert them to experiencing their product and service providers digitally. This understanding provides insights into the aspects of daily life that reveal unmet needs and desires and indicate opportunities to satisfy them.

• Experience Architecture vs. Information Architecture
• Personas, consumer journeys, and customer lifecycles
• Design information systems
• Industry examples

Register Now

Managing Design Risk: Exploring and Exploiting the Economics of Interaction
Wednesday, May 6, 1pm EDT
Michael Schrage, Fellow, MIT Media Lab

	Michael Schrage

Conceptually and technically, good designers tend to be founts of good ideas. During difficult and challenging times, however, the challenge is less ‘good design’ and more around convincing colleagues, clients and customers that good design is more than worth the investment. Persuading people or—better yet—putting people in a position to persuade themselves becomes an essential part of a holistic design process.

This webinar describes and discusses tested techniques that design innovators and innovative designers can use to cost-effectively manage ‘design risk’ with their key constituencies. Participants will come away with simple but powerful tools to improve their powers of participatory persuasion.

Register Now

Upcoming DMI Seminars

The 2009 Seminar on Creating Meaningful Brand Experiences and Producing Customer Happiness
Dave Norton, PhD, Principal, Lead Strategist, Stone Mantel
April 16-17, New York City, USA
"Dave's workshops helped us to more clearly articulate out company culture and therefore arrive at a concise definition of our brand, our services, and the kind of experience our clients can look forward to in working with us."
—Erin Heath, Information Resource Manager, Tsoi/ Kobus & Associates
Complete information

The Trendmaster's Guide to Great Design
Robyn Waters, President, RWTrend
Gary Springer, President, SpringWater, LLC
May 11-12, 2008, Chicago, USA
"Robyn's lessons, the examples she uses, the exercises we performed in this workshop—they inspired us to take a fresh, new approach to this process which feels authentic, effective, and just right for our department at this time. It was fun too."
—Kevin Gillespie, Design Operations Manager, New Balance
Complete information

Design Research for Product and Service Innovation
Darrel Rhea, CEO, Cheskin Added Value
May 14-15, San Francisco, USA
"Darrel knows his stuff and is always fascinating to listen to. A great presenter!"
—George Allen, Design | Strategy | Research | Inc.
Complete information

Integrating Design, Technology and Business for Rapid, People-Driven Innovation
Jonathan Dalton, Director, Philips Design
Stokes Jones, Director, Foresight, Trends & People Research, Philips Design
June 4-5, Boston, USA
Learn tools and techniques to foster integration for innovation in your organization. Gain examples of how to build a business focus by being people-centric, and roadmaps towards new strategic frontiers.
Complete information

New Master of Design in Strategic Foresight & Innovation
Ontario College of Art & Design, Toronto, Canada

The Ontario College of Art & Design has announced a new program to address the complex dilemmas of contemporary society. The ability to make sense of complexity, think strategically and innovatively, and develop solutions of sustainable value is critical to the ongoing and future success of our society, culture, economy and environment. The Master of Design in Strategic Foresight and Innovation interweaves design with social science, technology, and business.

The program is designed to appeal primarily to working professionals in fields such as design, art, engineering, business, marketing, communications, and the social sciences, who wish to hone their strategy and innovation skills. Launching in September 2009, the program will initially be offered as a part-time two-year program. Starting in September 2010, it will also be offered as a full-time one-year program. More information: www.ocad.ca/programs/graduate_studies.htm

DMI Review Download of the Month
Embedded Brand: The Soul of Product Development
By Guido Stompff, Senior Designer, Design Department, Océ, Netherlands
From the Design Management Review, Vol. 19, No. 2, Spring 2008

Durable goods, by definition, outlive any brand campaign. Brand ambassadors that stand on their own are used over and over again until they break down or become obsolete. While they exist, they communicate brand values, whether explicitly or implicitly; they are the vehicle for the brand experience.

Whether a brand promise is fulfilled is the work of many people within the organization. You may not think of the members of your product development team as brand experts—but it's a good thing they are. And how do they manage to create products that are usually remarkably well aligned with the brand message? Guido Stompff, a senior product designer with Océ Technologies B.V., thinks it is the result of what he calls "embedded brand."
Read the complete article

DMI maintains an online calendar at www.dmi.org with even more events.