Brainstorm Design 2023: Welcome

Fortune

Clay Chandler, Executive Editor, Asia, FORTUNE; Chair, Brainstorm Design

Transcript

00:00 Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the MGM COTI

00:04 and to Brainstorm Design 2023.

00:06 It's great to see you here in Macau.

00:09 We're delighted to be in this city,

00:11 and we'll talk a little bit about that in a minute,

00:13 the significance of being in Macau.

00:15 But first, I wanna try to just share with you

00:17 a design moment that comes from Silicon Valley.

00:21 The year was 2021, and at the height of the pandemic,

00:25 Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi was going stir-crazy.

00:29 He felt trapped in his San Francisco home,

00:32 trying to run the company's ride-hailing

00:33 and food business remotely.

00:36 He remembered later in an interview with Fortune

00:38 that he wanted to get the hell out of the house.

00:40 He wanted to do something constructive.

00:42 And so his solution to that dilemma

00:44 was to try moonlighting as an Uber driver.

00:48 First, he bought an e-bike,

00:49 and he anonymously delivered food

00:51 for the app on San Francisco's busy streets.

00:54 Then he expanded his experiment.

00:56 He bought a used Tesla Model Y

00:59 and began transporting riders around the city

01:01 under the pseudonym Dave K.

01:04 And what he discovered from that experience

01:06 did not please him.

01:08 The more he drove, the more frustrated he became.

01:11 It turns out that Uber's software

01:13 was incredibly difficult for drivers to use.

01:17 As a company, Dara later explained,

01:19 we were very much focused culturally on the rider

01:21 and the eater product because we used it ourselves.

01:24 But we didn't take pride in the driver product

01:25 because none of us drove.

01:28 For Dara, that was a revelation.

01:30 He called an all-hands meeting for Uber staff

01:32 where he delivered a stinging presentation

01:34 with a now-infamous title, Why We Suck.

01:38 Well, that got a lot of attention,

01:39 but Dara's epiphany that there is power in empathy,

01:43 that understanding users can help your company

01:45 suck a little less, is really at the heart

01:47 of what brainstorm design is all about.

01:50 Five years ago, Fortune editors convened

01:53 the first brainstorm design conference in Singapore

01:55 because it had become clear to us

01:57 that a large and growing number of Fortune 500 companies

02:00 were using the mindset and the methods of designers

02:03 to better understand their customers,

02:05 to hang on to those customers,

02:06 and to drive genuine business value.

02:08 We thought that was a big deal,

02:11 and for at least two reasons.

02:12 One is that we saw that the great forces of the modern age,

02:15 globalization and digitization,

02:17 were dismantling traditional barriers

02:19 to entry in nearly every sector of the economy.

02:22 Large firms could no longer rely

02:24 on manufacturing capacity, a superior supply chain,

02:27 or established distribution networks

02:29 to defend their market position from challengers.

02:31 The rise of China and other emerging economies,

02:34 combined with newfangled technological developments

02:36 like big data, or the Internet of Things,

02:39 automation, and artificial intelligence,

02:41 were combining to flatten and commodify

02:43 traditional back-end defenses.

02:45 In this brave new world, design offered a way

02:48 for companies to focus on the front end of their operations,

02:51 where they actually connected with customers.

02:54 A second reason was complexity.

02:56 We saw that design could help bring order and coherence

02:59 to the chaos of our increasingly hyper-connected world.

03:02 It seemed to us that design had emerged as something more

03:05 than just a middle management function.

03:07 Design was no longer just about marketing,

03:09 and branding, and packaging.

03:10 More and more, we saw that innovative firms

03:12 were elevating designers to the C-suite.

03:14 They were embracing a design perspective

03:16 as central to corporate structure, strategy, and culture.

03:20 And so we thought we should talk about that.

03:21 We should bring people together.

03:23 We organized a conference that convenes designers

03:26 from a wide array of different experiences.

03:29 Classical designers, the people who make stuff,

03:32 automobiles, appliances, buildings, whole cities.

03:37 We convened commercial designers,

03:39 people who think a lot about processes,

03:41 not so much just about how things look, but how they work.

03:44 Think about companies like IDEO, or McKinsey,

03:46 or Accenture, or BCG.

03:49 We convened digital designers who worry

03:51 about user experience, who create apps,

03:53 who help customers to navigate websites.

03:55 And we tried to connect all those designers

03:57 to business leaders, people who may not be design experts,

04:01 but who make key decisions involving resources,

04:03 people, technology.

04:06 This year, we're paying particular attention

04:08 to how artificial intelligence is transforming

04:10 the designer's role.

04:11 Hence, our theme for the year, Empathy in the Age of AI.

04:15 What does human-centric design look like in an age

04:17 when more and more decisions are being delegated

04:19 to algorithms and robots?

04:21 Will AI help companies better understand or serve customers,

04:24 or will it create new barriers between them?

04:27 We also hope to delve into other topics,

04:29 including how AI is shaking up the art market,

04:33 design's role in the global race

04:34 to dominate the electric vehicle market,

04:36 designing immersive experiences,

04:38 and how design can help achieve

04:40 social and humanitarian goals.

04:42 It's fitting that we will engage

04:44 in all these conversations here in Macau,

04:46 a city with a long history as a global trade hub

04:48 that is now in the midst of its own radical redesign.

04:52 We hope that in some small way,

04:53 these conversations will contribute to Macau's effort

04:56 to reestablish this city as a global center

04:58 for art, culture, creativity, and design.

05:01 You'll likely by now have noticed the books outside

05:04 that are on display around the room.

05:06 These are titles that make up

05:07 the Stanford Design School's Design Library.

05:10 It's a 12-book publishing partnership

05:12 between the d.school and 10 Speed Press.

05:14 If you would like to take a set of these books home,

05:17 they'll be at the registration book.

05:18 Please do take them.

05:20 They're there for you.

05:21 And we wanna thank the d.school for that.

05:24 Today's program will be available in Mandarin translation,

05:27 which you can access by the headsets on the table

05:29 on channel one.

05:31 Before we begin, I wanna remind everyone

05:34 that of our reporting and social media rules,

05:37 what's said on stage is on the record,

05:39 but what's said over the table during a meal

05:40 or on a break is private unless agreed otherwise

05:43 by the parties involved.

05:45 We wanna thank our host partner, MGM Kotai.

05:48 We're delighted to be able to convene Brainstorm Design

05:50 in this hotel, which is one of the most

05:52 design-forward properties in Asia.

05:55 And we're especially pleased to welcome MGM China

05:57 co-chair, Panzi Hou, as a speaker later today.

06:00 We also wish to thank our strategic partner, Wulong Ye,

06:05 our partner, Cha Ling, and our media partner,

06:07 ATCO Worldwide.

06:09 I would like to acknowledge my Brainstorm Design colleagues

06:12 as well, Alan Murray, who's Fortune Media's CEO.

06:16 Thanks, Alan, for coming all this way to be here with us.

06:18 Wang Fang, the Shanghai Executive Editor for Fortune China.

06:22 Nicholas Gordon, who's Asia Editor for Fortune.

06:25 Claire Zillman, a Senior Editor for Fortune.

06:28 Tony Chambers, Brainstorm Design co-chair and founder

06:30 and Creative Director of TC and Friends.

06:32 You get a chance to meet all those people

06:34 as our program unfolds.

06:35 And with that, I would like to welcome

06:37 three of today's leading commercial designers

06:40 to discuss with us here on stage the value of design.

06:43 Please welcome Ben Shepard,

06:45 Partner at McKinsey & Company.

06:46 Cliff Kuang, UX Designer and author

06:49 of the outstanding book, User-Friendly.

06:52 And Katrina Alcorn,

06:53 former General Manager for Design at IBM.

06:56 Folks, why don't you come out and join us, please.

06:59 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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