Q&A Q& A Chief Design Officer, 3M company I strongly believe it is important to bring yourself into a state of continuous challenge, risk-taking, and change. Anybody can participate in a design-thinking approach, but that doesn t make everybody a designer. Driving the concept of creativity and design in large organizations comes with a long-term commitment it will not be a sprint but more of a marathon. 4 DMI VOL.28, ISSUE 1
Chief Design Officer, 3M company Q&A QUINT With more than 25 years of global design experience that includes a distinguished career at Royal Philips, brings extensive design leadership in building and managing multidisciplinary creative teams to drive brand experience and innovation. He joined 3M in 2013 as chief design officer to build and lead the design function as a vital competitive platform across the enterprise. His passion for the positive impact of design and design thinking on the future of 3M, its business partners, and its customers makes him an active champion of collaborative creativity. As a recognized design industry leader, Quint has led award-winning global design teams across both business-to-business and consumer industries and has managed design activities for strategic partnerships, alliances, and brand licensing engagements. Since joining 3M, he initiated and successfully implemented a new corporate brand identity and designed and realized a state-of-the-art design center at 3M s company headquarters in St. Paul, Minnesota. Tell us about a day in the life of a design executive like yourself. What tasks are most important and what kinds of skills do they require? As the design leader for a global enterprise, the chief design officer plays a role with multiple dimensions. You represent creativity and design as a functional leader for the company, and your mission is to bring design to the world and the world to design. It s important to bring the results of your design team to internal and external stakeholders and conversely, to bring stakeholder interests and ambitions to the design team. That way, the design team creates relevant and inspirational results that affect the business and their customers in a positive way. As a design leader, it is important to lead the function of design in the way you would lead any other function research, marketing, human resources, or legal. The design leader should enable conditions in which global design teams can thrive. When you re leading a global transformation in design and creativity at a large company, it is important that your colleagues understand the essence of design in order to appreciate it and become ambassadors themselves. It is essential to get the fundamentals in place with respect to processes, methods, and tools before scaling design. Transparency about how design is organizationally aligned within the company is also key. Having an agreed-upon design governance distributed across the global organization and endorsed by company leadership is crucial to successfully build and grow design as a function. There must be recognition that design is a competency that should be owned and managed by design. Furthermore, you need to have some skill as a design educator to create awareness about the different aspects of design and design thinking. I see a lot of disappointment with designers who struggle to connect with other functional colleagues across their organizations, and as a result, experience a lack of recognition and respect for their profession. In many cases, it comes down to effective and inspirational communication about what design is doing, how collaboration happens, and what the impact of design can be. Only after creating sufficient understanding and awareness about design is it fair to expect other functional colleagues to appreciate what design can contribute. If you have strong awareness and appreciation for design, you will naturally create ambassadors who understand design value and are willing to reprioritize investment, driving organizational change and behavior together with the design function. Asking myself the following questions has resulted in the attributes I feel are necessary to be an effective chief design officer: How might we understand the unmet needs of our customers and our business partners? A design leader needs to be empathetic, driven by curiosity to observe people beyond mere dialogue. Through empathy, design leaders will better understand the needs of customers to support relevant innovations, drive great brand experiences, demonstrate great design leadership to their teams, and enable cross-functional collaboration. Empathy is recognized as one of the unique capabilities of any designer; it leads to better understanding of customer needs and behavior. Design can have even more impact when it leverages and applies this unique capability more consciously to connect across other functions. How might future scenarios inform our strategy and actions today? A design leader must apply creative sensibility to the context of guiding and inspiring future thinking. Design DMI VOL.28, ISSUE 1 5
Q&A QUINT (continued) leaders have a role to challenge the status quo and to imagine what the future could encompass. The job of design is to stretch and to be a stretch agent, creating probable future scenarios and starting what-if discussions. It is important to probe these discussions to evaluate business and design scenarios, risks and opportunities, in order to help companies navigate through dynamic changes and evaluate their options. How might creative leadership drive effective transformation? A design leader needs to demonstrate continuous diplomacy and patience to navigate transformation across organizations that are often global and complex. Driving the concept of creativity and design in large organizations comes with a long-term commitment it will not be a sprint but more of a marathon. Optimism, engagement, and inspiration are the drivers for such a transformation. You are one of only a handful of chief design officers in the world leading a large organization. Why are this title and position important? And do you have any advice for companies considering elevating the role of design to the CDO level? Indeed, only around 10 percent of the Fortune 100 companies have placed design as an executive priority, and only a handful of those have created the role of a chief design officer. 3M is committed to adding design successfully to its portfolio, because the company has recognized that design enriches innovation and differentiation through brand experience. Adding design to a global company has a transformational impact on the culture and DNA of the company. The level of such a transformational role needs to 6 DMI VOL.28, ISSUE 1 be well-positioned and aligned with the ambition that comes with it. A chief design officer should be focused on designing the function of design (fundamentals) and designing the company (brand experience) in addition to being a change agent into the future. The strategic importance and the value of design and creativity are recognized within many organizations today and provide future opportunities for design leadership in business, governments, and communities. Companies that have installed a chief design officer have recognized the value of design and are making a statement about its importance to their organization. They have acknowledged and elevated design as a separate function that operates with its own budget, organizational governance, capabilities, and approach, using skilled and trained design talent. With that said, creating the role of a chief design officer is no guarantee for success. Successful design is not about the role itself, or about having a department of ABOVE Design thinking applied with the right tools. design. It is very much about leadership, investment, and creating the oxygen for long-term creative transformation. Adding design to an enterprise is a transformational program that changes the way people think, act, and collaborate throughout all processes and phases of the business which is no quick and easy task. If there is no long-term commitment to design, design will not be able to create value, and designers will not be utilized in an effective and impactful way. Driving design-functional leadership as a vital creative platform throughout a global organization requires seasoned design leadership to create momentum and respect among colleagues. The journey is about influencing and changing the culture of the organization with a combination of bottom-up leadership and leading by example with appropriate top-down support. The most effective organizational changes are the ones in which people embrace the change and make it part of their own culture.
Q&A QUINT You ve been at 3M now for almost four years. What accomplishments are you most proud of in the short time you have been there? Faced with the possibility of becoming the design leader for a well-known, successful, and respected innovation enterprise in another region of the world, I was immediately very excited about this unique opportunity. Coming from a company that had valued design for more than 85 years, I started to realize, after several discussions with senior management, the enormous potential for design and creativity for 3M. Then I started to consider the potential risks and barriers that could arise on the journey to drive design and creativity for an enterprise that is very technology-, science-, and fact-driven. How often do designers experience the pressure between the ambition of a design challenge and the organizational ability to transform and make changes to realize bold ideas? Despite this, I was very enthusiastic about the new design leadership role. I started the position in 2013 and approached the challenge as a design project, applying all my experiences as a designer to drive transformation by design. Having worked for several years as a design executive in another large design-driven enterprise and for other large organizations as head of a design consultancy, I felt I had the appropriate context and insights about what is most important when creating a design excellence organization. Now, looking back, I feel we have only just begun. To put the complexity of the transformation in context, 3M is a $30B global company with 89,000 employees, five business groups, and 24 divisions across 70 countries. My role is to elevate design and creativity as a global competitive platform across the ABOVE Collaboration Project: Urban Tree Lounge installation. 3M is committed to adding design successfully to its portfolio, because the company has recognized that design enriches innovation and differentiation through brand experience. enterprise and to drive innovation and create relevant brand experiences for B2C, but also for B2B, which is the majority (around 85 percent) of 3M s business. One of the first things I initiated was the definition and consolidation of the governance of design, followed by getting the processes and infrastructure in place to support design scale across the organization. This included creating a taxonomy of design, defining a talent development program, and fostering a collaborative approach to creativity for 3M design teams. It is crucial to create meaningful career paths for our people today and in the future. Other major accomplishments during my tenure include global alignment of the design organization, substantial growth in our design staff, and the establishment of multiple studio locations around the globe, including a new, state-ofthe-art design center located at 3M headquarters in St. Paul. We also initiated the development of a new corporate identity, as part of a refreshed and new brand platform 3M Science. Applied to Life in which the design team partnered closely with the corporate marketing and the brand team. This work has grown the company s brand value, according to Interbrand s Best Global Brands Top 100 list, by $2 billion over the last two years. We have elevated our role in the company around the world, applying design and creativity to co-create directly with customers. The work of the 3M design team has been recognized with more than 70 international design awards by peers in the design world since the start of my journey in 2013. We made a lot of progress and established the organizational DMI VOL.28, ISSUE 1 7
Q&A QUINT (continued) fundamentals for design, and we have still a lot of opportunity to advance. You have just opened a 3M Design Center. Why is a design center needed? What impact do you expect it to have? Integral to the company s commitment to apply science in dynamic ways to improve lives daily, the new design center serves as a central hub to enhance creativity for the design team. The 3M Design Center is the result of a strategy to grow design and creativity for the company into the future. As a quickly expanding design team, we were outgrowing our existing space and needed a design center that was able to accommodate our growing creative team. The new studio space was created by our designers for our designers, with lots of details that bring to life our values as an organization reflecting our culture of design professionalism 8 DMI VOL.28, ISSUE 1 and art craftsmanship, spontaneous collaboration, thoughtful creativity, and insightful storytelling. We will continue to inspire and grow our design talent across all 3M businesses, further elevating 3M as a recognized leader in design. The new studio is inspired by local and global culture, influencing the contemporary design of the space. Building on the fundamental belief that design inspires design, we have worked diligently to bring creativity to life. The hybrid layout fuses the privacy of independent meeting areas with the collaborative functionality of communal spaces. The center will enable uninhibited creative possibilities for 3M businesses, customers, and partners. In line with the company s focus on the development of smart and sustainable solutions, the design center incorporates energyefficient climate control, lighting systems, and recycled materials, cultivating an eco- friendly and thoughtful environment. The space integrates multiple features to cultivate creative workspace opportunities, including a fast prototyping laboratory, materials library, and numerous brand labs. It s important that our designers can bring an idea to life quickly in our fast prototyping lab, and that there is space for cross-pollination and collaboration of programs and people. We also have an interactive area called the Design Hive that allows team members to spontaneously connect and creatively engage around design, new technologies, innovation, and brand with colleagues and business partners. The studio environment acts as an incubator for cross-disciplinary projects, ranging from home and office products to automotive materials and digital healthcare solutions. This unveiling builds on the momentum of 3M as a growing leader in design on an
Q&A QUINT complex to solve from within one function anymore. The best design comes from great teamwork where different disciplines work closely together throughout the phases of an innovation or branding activity. As a designer, it In a large company or organization, helps if you can speak and understand the what is the role of the non-designer vs. language from research and marketing to the role of the designer? How do they effectively collaborate to deliver benefits my earlier point of being empathetic and sensitive to different perspectives. Even for the company? across the different design disciplines, we Today s business challenges are too international scale. On top of a diverse and innovative portfolio, 3M will continue to amplify design thinking to advance offerings across multiple market spaces. 3M DESIGN CENTER: Top photo: Open work environment sparks conversation and collaboration. Bottom left: Creative hubs designed for spontaneous ideation. Bottom right: A mural that reminds the design team to be creative without limits. DMI VOL.28, ISSUE 1 9
Q&A QUINT (continued) are looking for T-shaped designers who are able to understand and lead complex design challenges. Diversity and inclusion are often linked to diversity in gender, age, and cultural background. Diversity is not about yourself; rather, it s about the ability to create intellectual space for others who think differently to flourish. Designers are still under-represented in their organizations we re talking about a couple of hundred designers working with thousands of scientists and marketers. I m a strong advocate for functional inclusion in relation to design. After all, it takes two to tango, and as much design can push their creative thinking, there needs to be a receiving party that is open and respectful of what design can bring to the table. When I started in my role, I introduced the theme Collaborative Creativity at 3M. Creativity is not solely owned by the design function; preferably, you strive for creativity across all functions. Design thinking is a great tool for collaboration as it is a multidisciplinary, problem-solving approach using creativity and insights to solve complex challenges. Anybody can participate in a designthinking approach, but that doesn t make everybody a designer. I m in favor of the attention design thinking is getting in large corporations at the moment. It is a great way to enable creative collaboration and cocreation across disciplines; it demonstrates the added value of designers and helps distinguish design thinking as a creative problem-solving approach from design as an act of art craftsmanship. What drew you to DMI? Why are you a member? My DMI membership goes back to the beginning of the 90s. As a designer, I realized that you can only have so much business and customer impact through the projects you work on. After my first 10 DMI VOL.28, ISSUE 1 Anybody can participate in a design-thinking approach, but that doesn t make everybody a designer. I m in favor of the attention design thinking is getting in large corporations at the moment. five years as a design practitioner, I had the opportunity to lead a design team. I quickly learned that it was crucial to the design team to be the design leader to interface with the business, understand their priorities, translate into relevant design programs, lead the creative direction and delivery of design programs, and support the design team to bring results to the business in a way that maximizes the value of design. This is the essence of design management for me, and that s where I learned to increase the impact and value of design and strategize design beyond just an aesthetic service. At that time, there was no education about design management, and thankfully the Design Management Institute offered a platform to connect with other design leaders and learn about best practices and strategic design approaches. It was always inspirational, insightful, and useful to share experiences and ideas about design management. After driving the value of design in large enterprises for the past two decades, I have observed that design management education is still catching up, with some initiatives linked to universities and services offered by niche consultancies. For the past couple of years, I have been part of the advisory council of the Design Management Institute and am more involved in discussions about the future of the institute. At the moment, 3M Design is a DMI forum member, leveraging its learning, network, and relevant content about design management. When visiting today s conferences, I m always interested to learn from best practices and great new initiatives around the globe. In return for all the learning over the past years, I m excited to share my experiences with the next generation of design leaders and inspire them about the value and impact of design. I m looking forward to upcoming DMI events, and in particular the Fall 2017 DMI leadership conference in Minneapolis. The 3M Design team is excited to host the opening reception in our new design center and engage with design management professionals from different regions and companies. Knowing what you know today, what advice would you give your younger self? Continuous learning will be essential throughout your career. It s important to be open to new developments in the design profession, emerging technologies, collaborations across functions, and changing societies. My advice to any young design professional is to be open to change. Designers are always pushing the boundaries in relation to innovation and brand, bringing other parts of their organizations outside their comfort zone. I strongly believe it is important to bring yourself into a state of continuous challenge, risk-taking, and change. I would strongly advise finding a seasoned coach/mentor, internal or external to the organizations you work for. The value of personal coaching can be effective and inspirational. It will support your learning and make you a more well-rounded design professional and leader, and who knows? You may become the next design executive to lead the transformation of a global enterprise by design.