Arvind Bhambri

has been on the faculty of the Graduate Business School at the University of Southern California since obtaining his doctorate from the Harvard Business School. He specializes in strategic change, competitive strategy, global business development, and leadership. Before coming to the U.S., Dr. Bhambri was trained as an electrical engineer in India. During 2000-2002, Dr. Bhambri took a sabbatical from USC to lead strategy and business development at a global web-based supply chain company in food and agricultural products with offices in India and the U.S. An active consultant and executive educator, Dr. Bhambri has co-authored three books and more than thirty articles and case studies, including Harvard best-sellers on IBM and Johnson & Johnson.

He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of Trianz, Inc., a global provider of consulting and information technology solutions in the U.S., Japan, and India, and The Music Circle, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to classical Indian music in Southern California.

Robert Blaich, FIDSA

With a BFA in industrial design from Syracuse University, Blaich worked in design and marketing before starting with the Herman Miller Furniture Company in 1953, and served as its vice-president of corporate design and communications from 1968 to 1979. In 1980, he became head of design at Royal Philips Electronics in the Netherlands, where he integrated engineering, marketing, and design and built a new corporate image of global design. In its 80-year history (as of 2005), Philips has had only five directors, including Blaich.

An active member of IDSA, he became a Fellow in 1981. He was president of The International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) from 1985 to 1987. In 1990, he received an honorary doctorate in design from Syracuse University and in 1991, was knighted by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.

He remained at Philips until his retirement in 1992, when he founded Blaich Associates in Aspen, Colo. He is the recipient of a Worldesign Medal (1992). He wrote Product Design and Corporate Strategy (1993), and New & Notable Product Design (1995). In 1999, he became chairman of the board for the design firm of Teague (formerly Walter Dorwin Teague Associates). Since 1980 he has received over 500 international design awards.

Blaich is on the board of the Institute of Design-IIT, The College of Visual and Performing Art at Syracuse University, The Beal Centre for Strategic Creativity-Ontario College of Art and Design, University of Art & Design-Helsinki Finland and INDEX-2005 and 2007, Copenhagen, Denmark. He has been a juror for five consecutive Red-Dot awards in Essen, Germany, and a visiting professor in the Department of Industrial and Interaction Design at Syracuse University. To continue his active interest in sculpture, he studies every summer at the Anderson Ranch Art School in Snowmass, Colo. His winter pastime is skiing.

Tim Brown, IDSA

is CEO and president of IDEO. Ranked independently among the twenty most innovative companies in the world, IDEO is a design consultancy that contributed to such standard-setting innovations as the first mouse for Apple, the Palm V, and Shimano's new Coasting bike. IDEO's work also addresses emerging themes such as sustainability, the design of communities, health and wellness, and enterprise for people in the world's lower income groups.

Tim is a leading voice on the value of design thinking in business and society. He participates in the World Economic Forum at Davos, advises senior executives of Fortune 500 companies on a variety of boards and committees, and serves on the Board of Trustees for the California College of the Arts and the Advisory Council of Acumen Fund, a not-for-profit global venture fund focused on improving the lives of the poor.

Tim has led strategic client relationships with such companies as DaimlerChrysler, Microsoft, Motorola, Pepsi, Procter & Gamble, and Steelcase. He has received numerous design awards, and his designs have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Axis Gallery in Tokyo, and the Design Museum in London.

Tim joined IDEO in 1987 after earning his MA in design from the Royal College of Art in London. He managed IDEO's San Francisco office from 1990 to 1995, and headed IDEO Europe from 1995 to 2000.

Sam Farber, H/IDSA

is the founder of Copco, OXO and Wovo. Farber graduated from Harvard in 1946 with an economics degree. He worked for his father Louis, who owned Sheffield Silver. Farber's uncle Simon founded Farberware in 1900. In 1960 Sam founded COPCO, a housewares company known for its well-designed colorful cookware and tea kettles. COPCO was sold in 1982 and Farber retired in 1988 to spend more time pursuing his interest in Outsider Art. He has curated Outsider Art exhibitions, lectured and written on the subject. In 1989 Farber watched his arthritic wife struggle with the daily tasks of using a vegetable peeler and decided a better peeler had to be made. He founded OXO International, now a leader in the manufacture of kitchen tools with innovative user-centered designs. In 2001, Farber founded WOVO with his son, John, to create thoughtfully designed products for the home. Their first line for this company is heavy plastic serveware with organic and sculptural forms.

Charles L. Jones

Charles L. Jones is vice president of Global Product Consumer Design at Whirlpool Corporation. In this role, he oversees a global staff of industrial designers, product engineers, anthropologists, interaction designers, design strategists and human factors engineers. Jones joined Whirlpool in 1995 as a leader in the Advanced Product Concepts group before being promoted into his current role.

Under his leadership, Whirlpool Corporation’s design group has received design and product development accolades like the Compasso d’ Oro and was invited to exhibit concept designs at the Trienalle in Milan and the Louvre in Paris. In 2002, Whirlpool Corporation received the National Design Award in recognition of the leadership position the company had attained in the field of product design. In 2003, Whirlpool was recognized with three BusinessWeek magazine Industrial Design Excellence Awards for design leadership and connecting design to business leadership.

Jones has received more than 30 international awards for product design excellence and has been awarded in excess of 20 patents. In 2001, he was appointed to the Academy of Fellows by the Industrial Design Society of America, its highest form of professional recognition. In 2004, Jones was named a Fellow by the World Technology Network in recognition of his accomplishments in linking technology strategies to positive business impact. In 2005 he was named a 'Design Impact Player' by Fast Company magazine and was named a Distinguished Alumnus and Fellow by Purdue University in 2008.

Jones graduated in magna cum laude with degrees in Industrial Design and Human Factors Engineering from Purdue University as well as a non-degree MBA through Xerox Corporation and Cornell University.

Lorraine Justice, PhD, FIDSA

Dr. Lorraine Justice is currently the Swire Chair Professor and Director of the School of Design at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She has served in higher education for the past 20 years, in the areas of design research, industrial design and computer interface design.

Prior to joining The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Professor Justice was Director of the Industrial Design Program in the College of Architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). Professor Justice was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant on the integration of technology and design, a SIGGRAPH Educator’s Grant, and a team Smithsonian Award in Education for the Mission to Mars" exhibition developed in cooperation with the National Science Foundation and Apple Computer. She is a Fellow of the Industrial Design Society of America (IDSA). Dr. Justice has consulted on design with corporations such as Apple, CompuServe, Chemical Abstracts, CheckFree, Microsoft, NCR, and Lutron.

Dr. Justice was responsible for co-organizing the First China-USA Industrial Design Conference in Beijing, and the first Doctoral Education in Design Conference in Ohio, both well-attended international events. She also serves on the editorial board of three international design journals, International Journal of Design, Design Studies and The Design Journal, as well as jurist and reviewer for international conferences. She has twice served on the Business Week/IDSA IDEA jury for best products and is a jurist for international paper competitions.

Professor Justice was named one of the top 40 influential designers in the world by I.D. Magazine in New York City for 2006. In September 2008, she gained the IDSA Education Award which was regarded as one of the highest honors as an educator.

Currently she also serves as Executive Board of Directors for the Icsid.

Steve Kaneko, FIDSA

is an award-winning Design Director in Microsoft's Entertainment Experience Group, where he oversees the product experience for Zune, the company's most recent venture into the entertainment field. Before coming to Zune, he was the founding Director of Microsoft's Windows Hardware Innovation Group, where he championed the design philosophy of the next-generation Windows Vista PC hardware experience, resulting in an international design initiative to change the way consumers interact with and perceive personal computers.

Steve has been a Microsoft design pioneer since 1991, having run the Hardware Peripherals Design Group and serving as a Design Director for the Windows organization, overseeing shell and brand experience coordination for Windows XP. He continues to be one of Microsoft’s most patented employees, and is highly recognized for his contributions to the design and development community. Prior to Microsoft, Steve held design positions at Fluke Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, and the award-winning design consultancy Technology Design.

Steve has garnered numerous industrial design awards for his work, and is a frequent presenter at universities and conferences on design, ergonomics, and interaction. Microsoft Mouse 2.0, which he designed in 1993, has been included in the Museum of Modern Art's permanent design collection in New York. His pioneering work in the area of input device design and interaction continues to be referenced in today's market. In 1995, He was named one of I.D. magazine's I.D. Forty, recognizing the 40 most influential designers in the field of technology. He was also a 1999 finalist in The Economist's World Technology Awards. His most recent honor came in 2005, where he was inducted into the Industrial Designers Society of America's Academy of Fellows for his significant contributions to the profession.

Steve holds a BFA in Industrial Design from the University of Washington in Seattle.

Guy Kawasaki

Guy Kawasaki is a founding partner and entrepreneur-in-residence at Garage Technology Ventures. He is also the co-founder of Alltop.com, an online magazine rack" of popular topics on the web. Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of nine books including Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. He has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

Sam Lucente, IDSA

Working at the intersection of design, innovation and customer experience, Sam Lucente leads Hewlett-Packard’s design practice in creating world-class designs across all customer touch points to build an iconic brand. His work entails building a community of design professionals that use design as a strategic business tool and infuse the company’s products and services with a unique HP look and feel. This drives efficiency, makes offerings more competitive and creates a better experience for HP’s customers. Prior to joining HP, Lucente led his own design company, providing consulting services in the area of integrated hardware and software design. He also provided creative consultations on web-based experiences, web utilities, wearable devices and mobile computers for companies such as Nissan and Nokia. Among his other roles, Lucente has acted as director of User Experience in the Technology Group at Netscape, where he managed a team of 30 designers responsible for the user interface of client and server products, including Netscape’s browser and email offering. At Netscape, Lucente played a critical role in Constellation," an advanced technology and design effort that won Best of Show at Comdex in 1996. Lucente began his career at IBM, where he led the ThinkNExt advanced design and development team which was responsible for a number of highly successful design, branding and technological innovations. He was the lead industrial designer on the ThinkPad 560 and 710, also known as The Butterfly," and he pioneered the Leapfrog" limited production concept computer. Lucente is a frequent speaker and lecturer at universities, conferences and design symposiums. His work has been recognised with major design awards and is in permanent collection at the San Francisco and New York MOMA, the Smithsonian National Design Museum and other collections. Lucente graduated magna cum laude from the College of Design, Architecture and Art at the University of Cincinnati.

Tom Matano, IDSA

Tom Matano has almost 30 years of experience in the automotive design industry. Prior to joining Mazda, he held design positions at General Motors in Detroit, MI, U.S.A. and Melbourne, Australia and BMW in Munich, Germany. In 1983, he joined Mazda’s North American studio as a Chief Designer. He continued to become Vice President of the Design and Executive Designer & Director of Mazda North American Operations. From 1999 to 2002, Mr. Matano has been moved to Mazda headquarters in Japan, as an Executive Designer in the Global Advance Studio and the General Manager of Mazda Design in charge of the Chief Designers as well as the Europe and North American studios. His accomplishments at Mazda include the MX 5, RX 7, Miata "M-Coupe" concept car, and many other projects by the design teams he managed and created. Mr. Matano is committed to becoming an educator, and using his diverse knowledge and experience to enhance the Industrial Design program at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.

Imre Molnar

Industrial designer and educator Imre Molnar was named Dean of the College for Creative Studies (CCS) in September 2001.

As the College's chief academic officer, Molnar oversees faculty, curriculums, academic advising, and academic resources such as the library and Center Galleries. He also leads the development of new degree and educational programs.

Born in Hungary and raised in Australia, Molnar comes to CCS from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, where he taught industrial design, illustration, foundation, and design management. He also served as director of education at Art Center College's Europe campus in Vevey, Switzerland.

In addition to his academic career, Molnar was recruited as a member of the senior management team and director of design at Patagonia, the internationally renowned outdoor clothing manufacturer and retailer with sales of $200 million worldwide. He previously served as director of operations for Hauser, a major design consultancy in the U.S.; as a tenured faculty member at the Canberra (Australia) College of Advanced Education; and as State Director of the Design Council of Australia.

Molnar has also operated successful design businesses in Australia and the U.S. Molnar received a Diploma in Industrial Design from the National Art School in Sydney, Australia, and a Master of Fine Arts in Illustration from Art Center College of Design.

Ken Musgrave, IDSA

For the last several years, Ken Musgrave has built and led Dell’s Experience Design Competencies, including industrial design, visual identity and usability, at Dell, Inc. The team now extends globally with creative professionals in Austin, Texas, Singapore, and Taiwan.

Before Dell, Ken led several design leadership and corporate identity roles, at Becton Dickinson - a medical technology company. While there he led a global programs to redefine that companies visual and product identity – including a new global corporate identity.

Ken holds an MBA from the University of Utah, an MS in Design from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a BS in industrial design from Auburn University.

Elie Ofek

is an Associate Professor in the Marketing unit at Harvard Business School. At HBS he teaches an MBA elective and an Exec-Ed course on the relationship between Marketing and Innovation. In the past he taught the required first year MBA course in marketing. Elie's research focuses on new product strategies in fast-changing, technology-driven business environments. In particular, he explores interactions between R&D and marketing decisions, and is particularly interested in how firms integrate marketing input when formulating innovation strategy. He also examines the implications of information technology and new media on product/content offerings. He received his Ph.d. in Business from Stanford University and also holds an M.A. in Economics (Stanford University) and a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering (Technion). Prior to entering academics, he worked as a development engineer in the audio/video multimedia division at an IBM research center.

Ravi Sawhney, FIDSA

Ravi Sawhney is innovator and Executive Director of the Catalyst. Born in Canada and raised in Southern California, Ravi is the founder and CEO of RKS.

Ravi invented and is co-authoring a book about Psycho-Aesthetics®, the popular design strategy which has been the subject of a Harvard Business School Case Study. The Academy of Art University in San Francisco awarded Ravi an honorary doctorate for his body of work, the development of Psycho-Aesthetics, and the reinvention of the electric guitar with RKS Guitar’s open architecture guitar.

Ravi has served as a speaker for top industry events including being the opening keynote speaker for the 2005 International Design Forum in Singapore. He is a regularly featured lecturer at Harvard’s Business School, USC’s Marshall School of Business, and UCLA’s Anderson School of Business and has lectured at The Art Center College of Design, The Academy of Art University, Stanford University, CSU Northridge, and CSU Long Beach.

Ravi earned his Bachelor’s Degree from California State University, Northridge. He is the father of two children, loves riding his motorcycle, and lives with his fiancée in the Santa Monica Mountains of Southern California.

Robert T. Schwartz, FIDSA

Bob Schwartz Joined GE Healthcare (GEHC) in December 2007 as General Manager, Global Design. With studios in five countries, Bob is responsible for overseeing the Global Design function encompassing human factors, industrial design, ergonomics, and user interface and design research.

Bob joined GEHC from Procter & Gamble, where he was a global design leader working to transform the design function there to a strategically relevant capability, which is now comprised of 300 global designers and design managers. Prior to P&G, Bob was VP, New Product Development at Levolor Kirsch, a division of Newell Rubbermaid, where he was specifically tasked with bringing innovation to the home decor industry. At Motorola, Bob was the Director of Industrial Design, responsible globally for all key product lines within the Commercial, Government, Industrial and Consumer Products businesses.Bob has been Executive Director and COO for the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), where he forged an unprecedented relationship with Business Week magazine to annually publish the Industrial Design Excellence (IDEA) awards and later the Catalyst Awards. He received a United Nations appointment to the People's Republic of China as Senior Advisor for Design, and testified before Congress on a Bill to establish a US Design Center in the Dept. of Commerce. Bob was also the Director, Science and Technology Programs for AdvaMed, where he forged strong partnerships with the FDA, HCFA and Congress and lobbied and directed policy and voluntary standards research for circulatory and cardiovascular devices, healthcare information systems and the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. Prior to this, Bob was the head of Corporate Industrial Design and Architecture for the American Red Cross, where he implemented new nation-wide mobile blood collection, tissue banking and disaster services systems.

Most notably, Bob was inducted into the IDSA Academy of Fellows at the World Congress of Industrial Design, for his outstanding contributions to the industry.

Education: Bob has a Masters degree in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design, where he was a Roddy Scholar, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Industrial & Graphic Design from the Kansas City Art Institute and School of Design.

Linda Tischler

Linda Tischler is a senior writer at Fast Company, where she writes about the intersection of business and design. For the past several years, she has been responsible for the magazine's October "Masters of Design" issue, which celebrates the people in the forefront of design thinking. She also oversees design coverage and blogs on Fastcompany.com, and launched the site’s team of expert design bloggers.

Prior to joining Fast Company, Tischler was an editor at Boston Magazine, where she initiated the New England Design Awards, and launched the magazine’s special "Boston Home" section. She has also written on art and design for Metropolitan Home, Better Homes and Gardens, and Maybourne Style, and held editing and writing jobs at the Boston Herald and Microsoft's sidewalk.com

In 2006, Tischler won the Society of Professional Journalists top award for feature writing, and was a finalist for the 2007 "Mirror Awards" for best single story.

Linda holds a bachelor's degree, and two masters' degrees from Boston University. She is married to a college professor, and has two children.

Lorrie Vogel

Lorrie Vogel, General Manager of Considered Design, Nike's sustainable design team, seeks to intertwine design innovation and conservation. The overall goal is to deliver more from less: less energy, less waste, and fewer chemicals while maintaining the highest level of performance for Nike products. Through Considered Design, Lorrie’s focus is to design out waste, chemicals and energy, and design in new materials and approaches. When this elevated consciousness is integrated into the design process, the value of the product is maximized and impact of their production is minimized. She wants to change the dialogue from consumption to transaction.

Prior to becoming the GM Lorrie was the Innovation Director for Nike Footwear, Apparel and Equipment. Her innovative thinking has lead to several new product technologies and patents. Lorrie's passion for design, innovation and sustainability together brought her to the role as a leader in bringing sustainability to all facets of Nike product.

With an Industrial Design Degree from Syracuse University, Lorrie has become a leading expert in design innovation. She has worked for many companies in product design and research and development for Texas Instruments and S.G. Hauser, a top design consulting firm in Los Angeles.

In early 2007 Lorrie was named to Fast Company’s Fast 50, the magazine’s annual compilation of innovative companies and the "incubators of genius". Her team's innovative work around sustainable design has been recognized in several publications; “Strategies for Sustainable Design” (Adam Worbach), "Green to Gold" (Dan Esty), and as a M.I.T. Case Study.

Helen Walters

Helen Walters is the editor of innovation and design at Bloomberg/BusinessWeek, where she has covered the intersection of business and design since 2006. A native of Sheffield, England, she moved to New York City in 2002 to found and edit the online, acclaimed, now-defunct design magazine, IDANDA.NET.

Prior to her American life, Helen was the features editor at the British design magazine, Creative Review, for which she is still a contributing editor. She has also written for numerous international design publications and is regularly invited to take part in discussions about the goings-on within the business of design at conferences around the world. She has also served as a juror on a number of international award panels.

The author of five design-related books, including a trilogy on contemporary T-shirt graphics and a collection of experimental animated short films from 1940, she has also written essays for monographs by a number of leading edge creative professionals. And, as if that weren’t more than enough Helen Walters for one lifetime, she tweets, @helenwalters.

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 corporations including: 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.