San Francisco is full of energy these days — I guess it always is. There is a lot going on and I have been doing my best to take it all in. Which has meant the design blog has been slightly inactive. But after tonight my College of Environmental Design lecture will be in the past — amazing how much time it takes to craft a new offering! Reporting on my various meetings and readings and adventures around design thinking then becomes my priority.
But I wanted to get two exciting conferences onto your radar screen if they aren’t there. I am attending both as my personal continuing education project.
The first one is in London, England on March 11-12. Sponsored by The Economist, it is called “Redesigning Business Summit: The Big Rethink” http://www.economistconferences.co.uk/event/redesigning-business-summit/146
The various parts of the two-program are entitled: The Challenge to Business, Rethinking Competition, Finding New Solutions, Building New Businesses and Building Businesses around Future Realities.
Within these parts, the program features topics like: “How the change imperative will continue to shake business in the next three years” and “How the imperative to address climate change will drive business innovation” and “Design Driven Innovation: Changing the rules of competition by radically innovating what things mean”. With speakers like Robin Bew, Editorial Director and Chief Economist for the Economist Intelligence Unit, Roberto Verganti, Professor of Management Innovation at the Politecnico di Milano, Paul Bennett, Chief Creative Officer, IDEO, David Kester, Chief Executive, Design Council.
I can’t wait!
Then — if this wasn’t enough, The Economist is co-hosting a conference on March 23-24 at the Haas Business School at Berkeley. This one is called “The Ideas Economy: Innovation”. This has a North American line-up including Matt Mullenweg, Found of WordPress, Roger Martin from Rotman, David Kelley, Head Stanford D-School and a host of other business people and academics.
The two conferences are both chaired by Vijay Vaitheeswaran, Global Correspondent for The Economist and the author of Power to the People. http://www.vijaytothepeople.com/
Will report in on both of them.