Rise of the DEO —Leadership Lessons by Design

#sxsw #wtfdeo

Just as we took our cues from MBAs and the military in casting the ideal CEO of the 20th century, we can look to design - in its broadest form - to model our future leader, the DEO. DEOs look at every business challenge as a design problem, solvable with the right mix of imagination and metrics.

Rise of the DEO explores the intersection of creativity and business acumen, explaining how and why this unlikely coupling produces leaders most capable of solving our increasingly complex business problems.

Written with appreciation for the realities of the modern workforce, Rise of the DEO helps readers identify these skills in themselves and their colleagues, and guides them in building, reviving or reinventing the next generation of great companies and organizations.

Presenters

Christopher Ireland

Co-Founder

Mix & Stir Studio

Christopher spent most of her career as a founder and CEO at Cheskin, a firm that pioneered design research in Silicon Valley. Beginning in the early 90′s, she and her partners (Davis Masten and Darrel Rhea) had one of the most amazing roller coaster rides you can imagine, developing brand and product strategies for Microsoft, HP, Intel, Motorola and Apple, as well as Pepsi, Coca-Cola, J&J, GM, Ford, Gap and Levi’s. Since selling Cheskin to WPP in 2007, Christopher has focused on advising early stage startups and teaching entrepreneurship at California College of the Arts. This year she co-founded Mix & Stir Studio - an incubator devoted to helping build and grow design-driven companies.

Maria Giudice

Dir of Prod Design

Facebook

Innovator, artist, protagonist, and positive provocateur—Maria Giudice has pursued a vision of intelligent, elegant, people-centered design throughout her professional life. Her grasp of the pragmatic, the authentic, and the essential have kept Maria at the forefront of the intersection of design and business for over 20 years. Under Maria’s leadership, Hot Studio, the experience design firm she founded in 1997, had grown into a full-service creative agency with offices in San Francisco and New York City. Along the way, Hot has been named to Inc. Magazine’s Top 5,000 fastest-growing businesses every year since 2008, and in 2011 was inducted into the San Francisco Business Times’ Hall of Fame. Known for her candor and wit, Maria has spoken at conferences throughout the U.S. and abroad, including TEDxPresidio, SXSW, and AIGA’s Design Conference. In 2013, her company was acquired at Facebook where Maria now works as Director of Product Design.