Why Is Design Booming Now?
November 6th - November 6th 2008 | ECCO Design, 900 Broadway, 4th Floor, New York
Overview
We have unprecedented knowledge about production systems, supply chains and business models, which has enabled us to produce products and information of incredible variety, leading to unprecedented consumer choice. Ironically, this leaves corporate executives in the dilemma of knowing *how* to make anything while not being sure of what to make. Companies have exhausted processes like Six Sigma, TQM and others, and now find that the best - and sometimes only - growth opportunities are found on the fuzzy path of innovation. Enter design. Design helps remove the risk of innovation by adding insights about people's daily life to an organization's knowledge of technology and business.
Faculty | Patrick Whitney Professor Patrick Whitney is the dean of the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology and is the Steelcase/Robert C. Pew Professor of Design. Professor Whitney has published and lectured throughout the world about how to make technological innovations more humane, the link between design and business strategy, and methods of designing interactive communications and products. His writing has focused on new frameworks of design that respond to two transformations: the shift from mass-production to flexible production and the shift from national markets to markets that are both global and “markets of one.” He has been on the jury of numerous award programs, including the U.S. Presidential Design Awards, was a member of the White House Council on Design, and was chairman of the program of the 1978 U.S. Conference of the International Council on Graphic Design Associations (ICOGRADA), which was the first major meeting addressing the issues of evaluating design from the perspective of users. Professor Whitney was the president of the American Center for Design (ACD) and the editor of Design Journal, its annual publication. He is on several advisory boards in the U.S. and abroad and is a trustee of the Global Heritage Fund. He consults and conducts executive workshops for numerous corporations and organizations. These have included Aetna, BP, Lenovo, McDonald's, Procter & Gamble, Steelcase, Texas Instruments, Zebra Technologies, and departments of the governments of Denmark, Hong Kong, India, Japan, and the UK. In addition to speaking at major design conferences throughout the world, Professor Whitney frequently speaks at conferences beyond the design field, such as China Daily's CEO Summit, the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit, the 50th anniversary of the Aspen Institute, and the TED conference. He is the principal investigator of several research projects at the Institute of Design, including Global Companies in Local Markets, Design for the Base of the Pyramid, and Schools in the Digital Age. His work has received support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and numerous corporations. Downloads: hi-res photo files curriculum vitae [pdf, 114k, 10pp]
To further explore why design is now more important than ever, please join me in New York on Thursday, November 6 from 7-9pm, for a discussion about the changing nature of innovation and design. You will also learn about research being conducted the IIT Insitute of Design on this topic, and how our programs are evolving to meet the needs of a changing world in which design is essential.
This event is hosted by ECCO Design at 900 Broadway, 5th Floor, New York. Please RSVP to ecollins@id.iit.edu by November 3. And of course, please share this invitation with others who might be interested in attending.
The IIT Institute of Design (ID) is a community of 150 Masters and PhD students and 30 faculty members focused on developing and learning advanced methods of design and innovation. The average age of an entering student is 29, about 40% come from other countries and about half come from fields other than design, including the social sciences, engineering, and business. In addition to the Master of Design degree, we offer a 9-month executive Master of Design Methods degree and a dual Master of Design/MBA degree with the IIT Stuart School of Business. All of the full-time faculty have funded research in areas that include interaction design, economic value of design, emerging markets & BoP, innovation methods, and health care.
