G. K. VanPatter
Co-Founder, Humantific, Accelerating Innovation Now!
Co-Founder, NextDesign Leadership Institute, New York
Founding Editor, NextD Journal, ReReThinking Design
GK VanPatter is a Founding Partner in the innovation acceleration consultancy Humantific (www.humantific.com) and Co-Founder of NextDesign Leadership Institute (www.nextd.org) in New York. He is also Founding Editor of NextD Journal. An internationally recognized innovation advisor and next design visionary he has been working in the realm of cross-disciplinary design leadership for 20+ years. He is recognized as an early advocate of extending designs’ reach into the realms of business transformation, strategy development, knowledge creation and organizational innovation.
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”.
Day 1: December 12th, 2007
Plenary Session 3
Raising the Bar:
New Perspectives on Design
4:00 p.m.- 6:00 p.m.
Design 3.0
Making Sense of Design Now!
NextDesign Leadership Institute founder GK VanPatter share insights regarding the emergence of the Design 3.0 activity space and the transformation of global design. A new generation of strategic design consultancies are already actively engaged in working on organizational transformation, enabling cross-disciplinary innovation, sense-making and in the creation of change within large complex organizations. Consultancies engaged in the 3.0 activity space often transcend product, service and experience to tackle unframed challenges on the fuzzy front end of the innovation process. The challenges of the Design 3.0 space are part of what is transforming what design consultancies look like, what expertise they encompass, how they go to market and what services they deliver. VanPatter and Pastor been sharing their community based research they since founded NextD in 2002. Among their current projects is the design of NextAcademy, a new Human-Centered Innovation Leadership School in Madrid.
Day 2: December 13th, 2007
Breakout Session: Round 3
Strategic Innovation
2:30 p.m. - 3:10 p.m.
Inclusive Innovation
Making Sense of Organizational Diversity Now!
Facing the increasing complexity of the marketplace business leaders today seek to tap into and maximize the diverse brain-power of their organizations. Everyone in the press is talking up the power of innovation, but for business leaders operating in the real world what does that really mean and how do you make it actually happen in the context of complex cross-disciplinary organizations? How do you make innovation real and sustainable? Innovation advisor and next design visionary GK VanPatter provides visibility into how Humantific helps corporate clients make sense of cross-disciplinary innovation and maximize the diverse strengths of their teams. Find out why organizational innovation is more about enabling people then it is about buying more technology.
