Alladi Venkatesh, Kathryn Best, Frédéric F. Brunel, B. Christopher Han, Seema Khanwalkar
On November 15 2008, The Paul Merage School of Business and The Design Alliance at University of California at Irvine (USA) hosted a one-day conference on Design Innovation and Research. It was organized by Professor Alladi Venkatesh (Associate Director, CRITO), Lynda Lawrence and Raymond Pirouz, with opening remarks by Sanjay Dalal, President & Managing Director, Innovation Index Group (Creativity and Innovation Driving Business). The school focuses on sustained growth through strategic innovation, and their MBA programmes also consider how to ‘bring effective and innovative business strategies to bear on today’s most pressing and compelling social issues’.
K. Best Presentation: Design and the Wold of Business
I talked about Design and the World of Business, providing a contextual overview of the relationship between design and business, and some specific examples of how design can shape decision-making processes, help identify new opportunities, and contribute to business success.
I particularly liked Seema Khanwalkar’s presentation on Tata’s Nano, ‘the people’s car’. Seema, a semiotics expert from the Center for Environmental Planning and Technology Ahmedabad, India, framed her presentation as ‘a design story from India’. B. Christopher Han represented Stanford University’s D-School (Dept. of Management Science & Engineering) and talked about customer experience and ‘Design Higher Quality Interactions’. Norman Stolzoff (Ethnographic Insight) presented on Sustainability and ‘What Green Really Means for Design’, and Richard Harper, Principal Researcher at Microsoft in the UK presented some of their current design research. Victor M. Gonzalez (Manchester Business School, University of Manchester) discussed ‘Design Considerations for Community Portals in Master-Planned Developments’, and considered the case of Real del Sol in Tecámac, Mexico. Summary and closing comments were by Frédéric F. Brunel, Professor at Boston University.
