Transforming an organization.

Evangelizing design thinking throughout IBM

The challenge

IBM was embarking on a massive shift from an engineering-centered to design-centered product organization. The opportunity to help build the largest design organization to date, and educate some of the best and brightest across a massive portfolio of products couldn't be passed up. I joined IBM Design right before the first round of 60 new hires came on board in an effort that was likened to me as "turning the Titanic".

The result

We designed and implemented a rigorous 3 month training experience for new college hires while also teaching product teams across the organization how to use design thinking to improve their products. Since it's inception, the Austin design studio has grown to over 300 designers, over 1000 product teams have been educated on IBM Design Thinking, and the IBM Design Language has had substantial impact on an extensive portfolio of social, mobile and cloud products.

My contribution

I was one of a select group of five design principals hired to lead this global initiative starting with the flagship design studio in Austin. I helped design and scale the DesignCamp programs for executives, for product teams and for new college hires. I mentored 20+ design teams in the studio helping to ensure good outcomes across their products. In addition, I led an exploratory design effort to establish internal collaboration solutions that would help globally distributed IBM product teams stay in synch as they move through the stages of design and development. This project, dubbed the "virtual studio" has since become a product used internally at IBM by over 1000 teams.