Wanted: VPs of Design---------More designers are reaching the executive ranks. But where are they getting the general business knowhow they need?

Every Tuesday, John McGuire, the director of product design for the hip San Francisco-based bagmaker Timbuk2 Designs, spends two hours with a tutor, Erin Lowenberg. A veteran merchant at Gap (GAP) under Mickey Drexler, Lowenberg helps the 28-year-old McGuire review developing product lines, prepare for presentations to the management team, align his line planning with revenue goals, and learn other essential business tasks that he wasn't taught in design school.
"School prepared me well for the day-to-day stuff that we do as designers," says McGuire, who joined the bagmaker 18 months ago and now heads a team of five at the 60-person company. "To me the gap is in understanding the bigger picture—how product design merges with branding and revenue planning and so on."
Bringing Designers into Management
McGuire's knowledge gap isn't unusual. "You're not taught about corporate finance or management at design school," echoes Kirt Martin, principal design manager at Turnstone, a subsidiary of furniture giant Steelcase (SCS). While many design schools offer corporate-sponsored courses intended to expose students to how design happens in the real world, and some design schools—such as the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford and the Illinois Institute of Technology's Institute of Design—are integrating business training into their curricula, the majority of schools still focus on core design skills like drawing and three-dimensional fabrication. Which means most design school grads lack the basic management, finance, and strategy knowhow that will help them be effective in the corporate world.
"There is a shortage of people with management and leadership skills," says Thomas Lockwood, president of the Boston-based Design Management Institute. A decade ago, when few companies gave designers a seat at the executive table, this lack of business training among designers was less of a problem. Lockwood points out that in large corporations, it used to be common for designers to be divided among different departments—graphic designers within corporate communications or marketing, industrial designers as a part of product development or engineering, interior designers within facilities management, etc. There was no centralized design department, and therefore no need for a companywide director of design with a broad set of business skills.
Today more companies are welcoming designers to the executive level. "There's been a big change in the number of VPs of design compared with just three years ago," says Peter Lawrence, director of the Boston-based Corporate Design Foundation. IBM (IBM), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) have all appointed vice-presidents of design in the past couple of years; Nike (NKE), Apple (AAPL), and other design-savvy companies have recognized design at the executive level for much longer. Which raises a critical question: Where can designers climbing the corporate ladder get the business training they need to be effective?
Filling the Education Gaps
While there's no standard answer, companies and individual designers alike are taking steps to address the problem.
For a designer in a small business, McGuire is lucky to be getting formal, one-on-one mentoring. "He has a great eye and his products are great for the brand," says Timbuk2 Chief Executive Perry Klebahn, who arranged for the sessions
(Klebahn also teaches at Stanford's Institute of Design, where students are required to work in interdisciplinary teams in order to get broad exposure to related disciplines.) "But it's important that he learns the business side, that he stretches his mind."
The word "stretch" also comes up in conversation with Lee Green, vice-president of brand and values experience at IBM. "We have something we call a stretch assignment—an opportunity to do something that's outside your comfort zone," he says. For Green, who joined Big Blue as a designer 28 years ago, that meant taking a management job in marketing in 1988 and then a job in advertising as a way to expand his knowledge and skills. In 1993, then-CEO Lou Gerstner asked Green to become director of corporate design.
"IBM is great at providing diverse opportunities for people that want the exposure," says Green, but he adds that he thinks it's unusual for designers to take those stretch positions because many prefer to focus on the discipline that they specialize in.
RitaSue Siegel, a headhunter who has placed myriad designers in upper management and executive positions, insists that all major corporations offer executive training programs to high-potential employees, including designers. She points, for instance, to Procter & Gamble (PG) where "designers get training in memo writing, giving winning presentations, and finance for nonfinance managers." As an example, she singles out Jon Denham, a former associate director of design for P&G hair care, whose broad business training helped him land a job as first-ever vice-president of design at another major consumer products company (a move soon to be announced).
Harvard Summer Camp
Still, designers at many companies must go outside their corporate walls to develop their business skills, to organizations such as Lockwood's Design Management Institute. DMI publishes a quarterly magazine and, in partnership with Harvard Business School, case studies, and it also offers seminars and workshops on various aspects of design management. Interest in the subject, says Lockwood, "has been growing. This year we expanded our program with seven new classes."
Recognizing the need five years ago, Harvard Business School, in partnership with the AIGA, a professional association for design, created Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders, a five-day summer program covering everything from product development and marketing to business strategy and customer relationship management. It's significant that the curriculum presents these subjects through the eyes of a business executive or client.
"You're sitting there in a room full of executives from Nike, Old Navy (GAP), and so on," says Turnstone's Martin, who attended this summer's workshop. "These folks are experts, but you get to the corporate finance section and it's like you're in a room of third graders."
The most valuable lesson, says Martin, was learning the case study method. "Designers carry around a lot of passion, and that's important," he says. "And a company needs to have some people who get really excited about a new product or idea. But other times it's not healthy. You need to be able to deconstruct an issue, to analyze it, and Harvard really helps you do that."
He points to a Corona case that charted the beer's improbable rise from a brew that tasted so bad you needed to squeeze a lime into it to the No. 1 imported beer in America. "They did it by listening to their customers and incorporating what they heard into their marketing," he says. "It's basic, but it reminds me that we can't sit in Grand Rapids and just produce furniture that we are passionate about. We have to be out there in the field and deliver what our customers want."
IBM's Green sees the biz-knowledge gap among designers narrowing as more companies involve designers earlier in the pipeline, exposing them to business strategy debates and so on. "When teams work collaboratively across disciplines, the lines between roles blur and everyone benefits," he says.
The point is not, of course, that all designers should be getting joint MBA degrees. "In many ways, the fact that many design managers never went to business school is an advantage," says the Corporate Design Foundation's Lawrence. "The unique training that they bring to bear is a positive thing."
Staying Creative
Erin Lowenberg, the Timbuk2 designer's tutor, agrees. "In my experience, successful apparel and accessory businesses allow design to stay pure," she says. "If design gets too focused on the numbers, it is my opinion the product gets too safe, maybe even boring. What if there is a trend out there that no analysis could possibly support? Design should be able to bring it to life and present it with enthusiasm and passion. That's when the good merchants take some buying risks and retail magic happens."
Still, while the core design team should be insulated from business pressures to do their best work, that doesn't change the fact that design leaders can be more effective if they have some basic management and business skills. For Siegel, the headhunter, programs that teach designers business skills are part of a bigger trend. "There's a whole transformation of the HR profession into the strategic role of talent management," says Siegel. "Companies focused on talent management develop proactive, long-term strategies for acquiring, assessing, developing, and retaining employees—designers and nondesigners alike."
Whether as part of a larger management initiative or not, the companies that help their design leaders grow by offering them in-house executive training or by supporting outside programs are the ones whose designers are able to make the most positive impact on corporate strategy and on the bottom line.

iPhone为什么会成功？(from http://blog.sina.com.cn/taodong)

“1984年，我们推出苹果机（Macintosh），它不仅改变了苹果公司，也改变了整个电脑行业。2001年，我们推出iPod，它不仅改变了我们欣赏音乐的方式，也改变了整个音乐产业。今天，我们要重新发明手机。”　
掌声中、镁光灯下，苹果掌门人史蒂夫·乔布斯以上面几句充满激情、充满煽动性的开场白，将他的最新产品iPhone推到了世人面前。世界上不知道有多少CEO在学习这篇经典的开场白，也可以肯定所有手机制造商的CEO对iPhone制造出的轰动效应深感妒嫉和焦虑。
乔布斯不愧为超一流的推销员。笔者不是电器发烧友，也不是苹果的铁杆追随者。不过，面对扑面而来的媒体报道和的确新颖的手机设计，笔者也忍不住想在iPhone亚洲发售时（2008年）买上一部。
千呼万唤之后，6月29日，iPhone终于在美国推出。连夜的排队等候以及上号登记的延缓，都不能减低人们对iPhone的热情。根据今日美国/盖洛普的抽样调查，90%的新手机拥有者对iPhone感到满意或极度满意，85%表示会向亲友推荐。这是一次极其成功的新产品发布。
iPhone真的那么好吗？这是一个2G手机，又大又重，没有按钮键盘，推出时间比预定迟了整整6个月，价钱比同类产品贵一倍。如果诺基亚或摩托罗拉CEO这么做，早就被董事局赶下台了。
乔布斯“重新发明”的手机有明显的缺陷。首先，iPhone采用2.5G的EDGE技术传送数据，这是基于目前网络接入现状而选择的让步，但因此（至少目前）失去了许多3G功能的应用，而且网络传输速度偏慢。其次，记忆容量偏低。售价499美元的iPhone，内存为4G，刷新了手机的内存记录，不过这个容量还是远低于30G和80G的iPod，且苹果操作系统及应用占用了其中的700MB。作为手机和音乐播放机，容量足够了，但是如果需要传送、储存录像或游戏，则显得捉襟见肘。第三，iPhone内置电池的工作时间肯定偏短。液晶面板是消耗能量的大户，iPhone恰恰以此作招牌。使用文件标明电池工作时间为5小时，即便属实，iPhone的电池也仅勉强达标。
新手机的重要卖点是点触式屏幕。新颖的设计、宽大的屏幕无疑很有吸引力，触击输入给人以“酷”的感觉。不过在目前技术水平下，屏幕输入速度远慢过键盘输入，是不争的事实。这对习惯利用掌上电脑（如Blackberry）发送电邮的商务用户，是一个致命的缺陷。
但是，iPhone的成功，在于它推销的不仅是一件电器，而且是一种体验。每个人都拥有手机，每个人都经常憎恨自己的手机。相比电脑，手机中的软件永远是小儿科，操作步骤复杂，User-Unfriendly。乔布斯的手机中，注入了人性的色彩，软、硬件设计从使用者舒适度出发，通过转换屏幕令通话、听歌、上网、发电邮变得更加轻松。这个宗旨，与苹果机在1984年摒弃文字指令、采用icon点击，是一脉相承的。将电脑上的操作系统植入手机，是革命性的进步，发出指令不再需要许多次的键盘操作，还给用户一个轻松的体验。
潮流是iPhone成功的另一个要素。新手机价格远高过其他品牌，但人们却趋之若鹜，因为它代表品位，代表社会地位，代表生活方式，手机主人可以向亲朋好友炫耀。苹果的品牌和设计，为用户带来功能以外的附加值，消费者不仅愿意花费500美元买手机，而且愿意每月多付35美元使用AT&T的套餐。
iPhone的营销策略，应该成为MBA课程的案例。乔布斯宣告“重新发明手机”和一阵媒体炒作之后，苹果居然隐声匿迹近6个月，拒绝提供进展报告，拒绝详述手机款式、功能。直至发售前几个星期，才逐步有选择地发布信息，勾起人们的期待和想象，让渴望中的“粉丝”和炒作中的媒体当免费的推销员，公司适时地在火上浇一点油。
苹果的成功和索尼的失败，有着强烈的对比。两家公司均定位于高端电器销售，高价位、高质量，均具有排它性，设计自成一统。它们都通过推出不同品种的产品，企图将消费者包围在自己的、排它的产品群中，以此获取高额的利润和持续的购买。
苹果的大包围远没有完成，不过它的布局还算理想，从电脑到音乐，再到多媒体手机。索尼的大包围却已千疮百孔。传统家用电器堡垒一个接一个地失守，连新任CEO霍华德·斯丁格（Howard Stringer）寄以厚望的playstation 3也惨淡不已，销量不仅只有老对手任天堂的Wii的1/4，也不及游戏领域新手微软Xbox的一半。
索尼的产品质量一流，颇具体验，但是走不出售卖硬件的俗套。索尼电器已经与潮流无关，市场营销策略未见改善。它的最后一个产品创新，是7年前的playstation，而固执坚持排它战略更成为其发展的枷锁。
在质量得到保证的前提下，注重体验、创意、潮流、营销。乔布斯为正在努力爬上制造业增值链的中国企业上了一课。