Feature A love letter
By Mauro Porcini Love: for work that transforms, for people
that come into one’s life and enlarge it, for the
beautiful, the strange, the new. Mauro Porcini
looks for designers who carry that flame inside.
To Mr. or Ms. Design, whoever you may be—a beloved friend,
a young designer trying to understand the career that lies ahead, or
an abstract idea struggling to find a role within the corporate world
and within society—I realize you are considering a move from mere
styling to holistic innovation, and you often find yourself stuck in
the middle of those two definitions.
May I share some of my experiences with you? This is not a lecture! I may be wrong in
many ways and on many topics. I apologize in advance if none of these principles apply to you.
But for sure they have been true for me.
In the past several months, I’ve made a transition from a technology-driven company (3M)
to a brand- and marketing-driven company (PepsiCo), and I have moved from Milan, where I
lived until early 2010, to Minneapolis and finally to New York City in a journey that has been
both physical and spiritual. It has also been a quest to understand how to position myself as a
design leader within a corporation and how to position design as a strategic asset for business
growth and innovation.
What’s the unique value that design and design thinking bring to the table, once we get
a seat at that table? Is successful design thinking more about design, or is it more about
thinking? What are the variables and experiences that affect and grow the quality of the
thinking part of design thinking? What makes the difference in the way we think? Is it just
58 DMI Spring 2013
DMI_Spring13_ART.indd 58 3/26/13 9:15 PM
Feature A love letter
There is no difference for a real
designer between life and work.
our design approach? Or there is more? To answer these questions, I have started a journey
within myself, reflecting on my life, my way of thinking, my background, and my professional
and personal experiences—trying to identify in those experiences the elements I was able to
leverage to grow the culture of design within both company and geography.
I have looked back at my personal life trying to understand what inspired me, what
motivated me, what helped me to reach specific goals, what slowed me down, what I did wrong,
and what were the characteristics of those individuals who taught me something extraordinary
and those who failed to deliver on the expectations created. And I did it so that I could leverage
this learning in dealing with the new challenges I had before me, both personally and for the
people I was going to hire and work with.
This is a letter about Design, but it is mostly a letter about leadership and culture in the
design world—because the design world needs leadership and culture, because design is not
established yet in most of the corporate world, and because design requires extraordinary
leadership to reach that goal. And because design is the most transversal of the disciplines and
by definition needs to interact and connect with a variety of functions and cultures, it needs an
extraordinary cultural depth.
People…
Let’s start this story with my father. An architect.
I grew up surrounded by the smell of old wood, paper, erasers, and pencils in my father’s
studio—there were no computers—in Gallarate, a tiny city outside Milano. My father (and my
grandfather) spent their lives painting, using all kinds of techniques on all kinds of substrates
with all kinds of tools. As a kid, my house was always filled with their art and experimentation.
They pursued that passion no matter what. With their genuine, naïf, positive passion, they
nurtured my curiosity about the beautiful world of art and creativity. But most importantly
they taught me to love my job and to love that love for my job. That’s what I wish for you, young
designers, and that’s what I have looked for over the years in the people I work with and hire. I
want you to love your profession, to love our profession, with the same uninterested, visceral,
natural, powerful passion that my father and my grandfather had for theirs. There is no difference
for a real designer between life and work. Design is our life. Design is not a job; it is a lifestyle.
When I hire a designer or select a partner, this is my very first requirement. A designer
without that flame inside is not a design thinker. And this is not something you can teach.
Either you have it or you don’t.
My father, my grandfather…. And I am Italian. How could I forget the role of my mother in
all of this?
As well as the many other things you may expect from your mother, mine infused in me
the love of reading. Reading allows us to become part of a never-ending dialogue that skips the
boundaries of geography and time. Brilliant minds have been sharing their thoughts—from
New York City, from a small village in Sicily, from the very center of Tokyo—as they write
online, or inside a book written hundreds of years ago. Through reading, you can have access
to the most amazing distillation of knowledge and thinking available on earth, amplifying
exponentially the opportunities of exposure to new thinking beyond the circle of people you
may meet in your life, no matter how connected you are. I have met so many “design thinkers”
DMI Spring 2013 59
DMI_Spring13_ART.indd 59 3/26/13 9:15 PM
Feature A love letter
Do not fall into the trap of arrogance
because you will stop learning and
you will become sterile.
who are caged within their own thinking and unable to project themselves into this dialogue.
But reading and becoming part of the continuum of thought allows your own thinking to be
fertile and to reproduce itself in unexpected and innovative ways.
It’s the responsibility of every design school to make sure that young designers appreciate
and embrace reading as a form of personal cultural growth. I love to enter the house of a friend
or the office of a colleague and see hundreds of books on the shelves.
… and more people
Then there are the people that “happen” into your life and radically change it… sometimes over a
long time, sometimes in a matter of seconds.
For instance, Professor Eccelsa Rotondella— the professor of philosophy who first taught
me to parse the meaning of the word (philo= love; sophia = knowledge). Love for knowledge—
for understanding, questioning, investigating, challenging. Doesn’t it sound familiar for a
designer? Isn’t philosophy, that merger of analytical and intuitive thinking, the very earliest
manifestation of design thinking?
Another person fundamental in my life has been Stefano Marzano, chief design officer of
Electrolux and former chief design officer of Philips Design. I met him when I was 18, at the house
of a common friend. When my friend called me that day about 20 years ago, asking me if I could
meet them for an espresso after lunch, I was in the middle of something I absolutely couldn’t leave.
But somehow I dropped everything and went anyway, because I felt I had to meet this guy. I knew
he was doing great things for design and in design, even if I didn’t yet have a clear idea of what that
meant since I was at the very beginning of my design studies.
In those few seconds, when I decided to leave everything and go, I gave a definite spin to
my life. The moral is to follow your instinct! This has been so important for me on so many
occasions—not just in my personal life, but also during the evolution of strategic design
projects inside and outside the corporate world.
Stefano inspired me immediately. He was already shaping a new role for design within
corporations. I remember him describing to me, two decades ago, how he was working on a
new idea for ringtones for cell phones. Stefano had the passion I recognized in my father and
my grandfather. He instantly became an inspirational and an aspirational model for me.
Hunt for those models, new designers! Search for people who can inspire you! Be hungry for
that. Nurture yourself with their energy.
Stefano convinced me to study English. He made me understand that it was absolutely
necessary if I wanted to work and play an important role in a corporation. I decided to move
to Dublin for a year to study design in English because of that advice. And trust me, for very
personal reasons, that decision was neither easy to make nor easy to carry out. But today I am a
design leader in an American company.
I thought it was too late, at 24, to learn English. But it is never too late for anything. It is never
too late for any change!
That year in Dublin changed my perspective on life all over again.
60 DMI Spring 2013
DMI_Spring13_ART.indd 60 3/26/13 9:15 PM
Feature A love letter
Travel!
And discover! Discover new places. Seek out difference, appreciate difference, embrace
difference! Because the difference, the exotic, is not just inspirational. It also helps us to
understand ourselves and the context from which we come.
Even in the no vacation nation, the United States of America, carve out time to travel!
Not just to the Hamptons if you are from New York City, or to the cabin if you are from
Minneapolis, or back home to see your family during one of the few weeks free you have every
year, or inside the walls of a resort by the pool on a tropical island. Travel the wild world! And
don’t be afraid of it. Discover the world and discover yourself through new eyes. Interpret
your design challenges in a new and innovative way through the new perspectives given you by
exploration and discovery.
Parallel worlds
Another person of the greatest importance in my life is my wife. So important for all the
obvious reasons, but also because of her background: she is a designer—a fashion designer.
She worked for the Gucci Group, back in Italy, and now for the Mayiet brand in New York City.
She helped me, as well as my brother, an industrial designer, to understand a world similar to
ours and yet so different. A world of foolishness, of elegance, of style, of balance and unbalance
blended together, all of which have inspired me so much. I have always encouraged any designer
working with me to investigate and learn more about those parallel worlds: product, fashion,
architecture, packaging, brand, strategy, art….
To innovate in your own discipline, it’s so important to have a broad knowledge and
a broad perspective.
Designerly Qualities
Clearly, it’s important to encounter these types of special people and have these types of
experiences. But how do you find them? How do you open your mind to them when you meet
them? How do we avoid closing ourselves in our arrogance? How do we learn from others?
I have looked back at my past and identified a list of qualities that helped me recognize
those people, that helped me create those encounters, and that helped me achieve the goals I
set for myself. Some were qualities I had to begin with, some were taught to me, and some I
had to work on myself. They are qualities I search for in every individual I work with or hire,
whether they are co-conspirators in an organization or partners in a design firm.
Mr. and Ms. Design, first of all:
Be curious. Be hungry. Hunt the world for insights, for information—and not just in
relation to the project you are working on. Do it always! Hunt always for the new, for the
different, for the exciting, for the unusual….
And love diversity. Nurture yourself with diversity. Never be afraid of diversity!
Listen with humility. Open your ears and open your mind! Be a sponge! With age and
promotions, we all risk listening less and less. How many times have I talked more than I
listened, and in doing so lost the opportunity to learn from amazing people. Do not fall into
the trap of arrogance because you will stop learning and you will become sterile.
DMI Spring 2013 61
DMI_Spring13_ART.indd 61 3/26/13 9:15 PM
Feature A love letter
Be confident. Make decisions. Listening doesn’t mean not acting. Learn, and then act.
Change, success, innovation—it is all about making confident decisions. The avoidance of
decision-making acts like a cancer in an organization. I have failed in the past when I pushed
to over-strategize and to collect every possible bit of information, thus delaying necessary
action. I also failed by acting too fast. Finding the right balance is the hallmark of a good
designer and of a good leader. Decide when to make decisions. And act on them!
Be resilient. All of us find closed doors and difficulties. It’s part of the game! If you
innovate and make changes, you will encounter resistance. It’s natural and you should expect
it. If you don’t, you should wonder if you are truly producing something new. Stick to your
vision. Resilience and persistence are necessary qualities for building something new, whether
it’s a new culture of design inside a corporation or an attempt to produce an innovative
solution before someone else does.
Be optimistic. Optimism reduces the level of stress produced by complexity and increases
the level of performance. The designer, called to deal with wicked and complex problems every
day, should be the most optimistic creature on earth! The psychologist Tali Sharot has shared
compelling scientific data about the role of optimism in leadership and success. Have a look at
her 2012 TED speech.
Go the extra mile. Faced with a goal of 100, many will reach 90 or 95; a few will reach
100. You, Mr. or Ms. Design, must go above and beyond. Always. Set 105, 110, or more as your
personal goal, and if you reach it, then you will be the only one up there.
Smile and have fun. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Life is a wonderful game we have
been gifted with, and work should be just the same. Enjoy what you do and keep a smile on
your lips. And by the way, the ability to face the world with a balanced dose of irony and fun is
one of the highest proofs of a brilliant mind.
Thinking like a designer
The qualities I have listed above apply to the design world, but they are not unique to that
world. For designers, there are some other qualities—a set of additional skills that define the
design thinker. They can be found in individuals who are not designers, but they belong to our
world. These are the qualities that define a design thinker:
Synthetic. Design thinkers are able to envision the big picture immediately. They are
abductive and holistic in their way of thinking.
Elegant. Design thinkers are elegant—in the process, as well as in the solutions.
Polyglot and storyteller. Design thinkers are able to deliver messages that are
understandable and relevant to various target audiences inside and outside the organization.
Intuitive. Design thinkers do not run away from the magic of intuition. They recognize the
role that the mysterious sparkle of a visceral idea can play in the process of innovation. And what’s
important is that they manage intuition inside the boundaries of firms and corporate processes.
Dialectical. Design thinkers are dialectical by definition. They smoothly jump from one
field to the other, moving from marketing to technology, from anthropology to manufacturing,
62 DMI Spring 2013
DMI_Spring13_ART.indd 62 3/26/13 9:15 PM
Feature A love letter
We often refer to design thinking by
talking about processes and frameworks.
Processes and frameworks are just tools.
People are the drivers, the essence, the soul.
from communication to research. This ambiguity is part of their essence. They are fully
comfortable with the conflict between rationality and soul, between functionality and style,
between process and intuition. In fact, they thrive in the middle of that storm! When searching
for new solutions, design thinkers surf comfortably on the fine edge between the feasible and
the unfeasible.
In love. Design thinkers are human-centered. They don’t care at all about customer
satisfaction; they are in love with their customers. Try to translate this concept to your
personal life. When you want to satisfy somebody, you do everything you can to fulfill all his
or her needs. But when you love somebody—your spouse, your son, your mom—you do more,
more than they may expect. You surprise him or her and enter the sacred field of the magic,
of the extraordinary, of the memorable.
Issues!
If this is true, if this is what makes us design thinkers and if it’s what makes us unique and
different from other profiles in corporations, then we have two major challenges. First, we
must create awareness about the role of design; and second, we must deliver on the promises
inherent in that role once we get a seat at the table.
The only way to explain a design process is to experience it. Companies that have embraced
design are full of people who have experienced design. Once you try it, you want to have more
and more of it. The issue is how to get it inside the corporation, with the right assets and the
right resources, to be experienced in the proper way.
If this is what design is really about, then we’d better have designers who deliver on that
promise. And it’s the role of schools, and of any design institution, to make sure this mindset
and approach is always celebrated, shared, taught, coached. But how can we teach empathy? How
can we teach curiosity? How can we teach resilience? How can we teach going beyond our own
discipline to learn from others? Can we simply rely on extraordinary professors or design leaders
who randomly arrive in our lives? Is there a way to institutionalize this passing on of knowledge?
By going beyond the so-celebrated “design process,” can we celebrate and teach the creation of
personal culture as background for right thinking first, and ultimately for design thinking?
We are lucky. Twice.
The bottom line, Mr. and Ms. Design, is that we are lucky and we have a unique opportunity!
We are design thinkers, whatever our specialization and title is or is going to be, in a magic
moment for design!
Read any business magazine and you’ll see that design and design thinking appear with a
frequency never seen before. In the past year, I’ve had conversations with five major corporations
hiring for the position of chief design officer for the first time. I have traveled the world to
conferences for marketing, R&D, and innovation, and I find that design is one of the new
key words. Managers from companies that have never before invested in design are attending
design conferences.
DMI Spring 2013 63
DMI_Spring13_ART.indd 63 3/26/13 9:15 PM
Feature A LOVE LETTER
Mauro Porcini joined PepsiCo brands, including packaging, global corporation. Mauro began
in 2012 as its Chief Design Officer. advertising, retail activation, his professional career at
In this newly created position, architecture, industrial design, Philips Design and then created
Mauro is infusing design and digital media. his own design firm, Wisemad
thinking into PepsiCo’s culture Srl, in Italy with the celebrated
and providing leadership in Prior to joining PepsiCo, Mauro entertainment producer and
architecting an innovative design served as Chief Design Officer at music star Claudio Cecchetto.
approach to the company’s brands. 3M, where his mission was to build
His focus extends from physical and nurture a design sensitive
to virtual expressions of the culture in a technology-driven
Design is at a crossroads. Companies are trying to figure out how to embrace and leverage design.
We are crafting a new role and a new space for design in the business society. It is a change that the next
generation will read about in design histories yet to be written.
And we are lucky for another reason. As professionals, we are thinkers, as well as doers.
We translate insights into action. By serving the firms we work for, by leveraging the resources of our
clients or of our companies, we also have an opportunity to shape the world. We actually have the
opportunity—and the responsibility—to shape a better world. Our mission must be one of “dreaming”
of things that can add practical, emotional, and poetic meaning to the life of each individual—not to
produce unuseful and unsustainable products that pollute our world both ecologically and visually.
We want to design meaning, not products.
Love
Given everything I have shared with you today, Mr. and Ms. Design, if you want to take home one
message, then let it be this:
Love everything that surrounds you, no matter what it is: the people, the places, the experiences,
the memories that with the right mindset and with an open mind can inspire you in your personal
journey.
Love the people we design for. In this way, we will make our firms and ourselves and our projects
more successful—and we will also be able to shape a better society through our efforts.
Love yourself, because each of us, each individual, is the most beautiful design project of this
world. Love yourself, because individuals, through confidence, curiosity, emotions, leadership and
smartness, are the only real drivers of positive change and evolution for corporations, for society, for
the world. We often refer to design thinking by talking about processes and frameworks. Processes
and frameworks are just tools. People are the drivers, the essence, the soul.
A few months ago, I was asked by a journalist where I saw myself in five years. My answer went
something like this: Wherever there is the opportunity of having a dream to accomplish, a vision to build,
and a plan to execute. Wherever I can find excitement and engagement. In whatever geographical and
spiritual space that allows me to wake up every day and look at the mirror and say, “I am happy!”
My wish for you, Mr. and Ms. Design, is that you will find a personal
and professional challenge that, every morning, when looking at yourself
in that mirror, will make you say, “I am happy!”
64 DMI Spring 2013
DMI_Spring13_ART.indd 64 3/26/13 9:15 PM
