As Director of Strategy at Humantific he works in the trenches with giant fortune 500 global companies including Pfizer, EDS, Organon and Morgan Stanley as well as startups such as Majestic Research, AttentionLabs and Sermo. The practices of Humantifc / StrategyLab, UnderstandingLab, InnovationLab help organizations large and small to create inclusive innovation strategies, visualize early stage innovation ideas and build adaptable cross-disciplinary innovation capabilities.

 

Prior to forming Humantific he was Innovation VP at Scient, a Scient Fellow and Co-Founder of Scient's Innovation Acceleration Labs. In collaboration with Elizabeth Pastor he created Scient’s inclusive innovation strategy as well as conceiving, designing and directing all aspects of the Innovation Lab including its strategy, organization, environments, and award winning cross-disciplinary skill-building program.

 

Concerned about the future of design leadership, he co-founded the NextDesign Leadership Institute with Elizabeth Pastor in the spring of 2002. Upon launch they began posing the provocative question: Who will lead design in the 21st century? Their NextD Journal / ReReThinking Design has thousands of subscribers in more than forty countries. NextD Journal conversations are widely used as thought leader reference materials in graduate design education around the world. NextD conducts ongoing cross-disciplinary research with graduate schools in Germany, India, Canada, Denmark, Switzerland, Australia and many other countries. Pastor and VanPatter are presently working with a group of collaborators on the creation of a new international innovation school that will be located in Madrid and will be “powered by NextD”.

 

 

It is no secret that the opportunity facing the design community in numerous countries including India is significant as globalization continues to cause great shifts in the marketplace. The difficult part is that making

the most of this moment will likely require bolder steps then simply adapting American product-centric design orientations to the customs and behaviors of consumers in India. While in America debate remains dominated by voices advocating consumer product creation as the ultimate extension of design and even the future of design, we see more diversity of vision in the global arena. In the international design community there is increasing realization that many of the challenges facing organizations, facing the planet can not be solved by creating more branded consumer products, services or experiences however well researched and human-centered they might be. Particularly among a new generation of design innovators, we see hunger for involvement in other challenge types and for other meaningful applications of design. This is a very different kind of design to get ready for. To a large extent this involves the invention of new design as much as it does the application of old design. Certainly the world would benefit from more diversity of new strategic visions including those from India.