Services

Whether for a business, a team or a project, shaping the future demands clarity of vision and a shared language on purpose and direction across all stakeholders.

I facilitate strategy and engagement workshops that help teams, businesses and organisations find common ground and shape direction.

Leaders of successful design consultancies carve out the time required to think strategically about where their design businesses need to be three to five years from now.

I build long-term relationships with the Partners and MDs of design businesses helping them with visioning, strategy and business development.

Throughout a client project, design teams benefit from having an external, design-trained ‘strategy head’ on board to better align design intent with the clients’ business goals.

I work ‘in-house’ on live projects with design consultancy teams sharpening strategic focus and adding insight on their clients’ leadership and business strategy benefiting the quality of design solutions that emerge.

When dealing with their top management, effective in-house design teams successfully demonstrate design’s value as a strategic business asset that contributes to brand and commercial growth.

I help in-house design teams to evolve their vision for design and articulate design’s vision for the business, clarifying how it contributes to corporate goals. This leads to more effective team-working and a stronger positioning for design within top management.

Design-led businesses and organisations integrate design into their everyday processes and culture. To do this well takes vision, belief, collaborative working and time.

I help leadership teams strategise how best to manage design as a key intangible asset, embedding it as a key function of leadership and design leadership as a key function of the business.

Robust and well targeted design policy, along with ‘design-in-policy’, delivers competitive and cultural advantage for nations.

I have contributed to the strategic development of regional, national and international design policy for nations including Austria, Brazil, China, Ireland, Qatar, South Africa and the UK, as well as for the European Commission.

Design promotion activities

Design conferences offer a platform to share and exchange latest understanding and trends in design and design policy. Design award schemes benchmark and promote good design practice.

Conference development

I have been involved in the concept and content development of a number of national and international design conferences including ‘Shaping the Global Design Agenda’, the first ever international design policy conference held as a part of Torino World Design Capital 2008.

Conference chair

I offer an engaging and facilitative style that brings conference delegates into the heart of the strategic and tactical issues at play, for example when chairing Cape Town’s ‘Make a Plan’ international design policy conference held in 2014.

Keynote speaking

I have given keynote speeches on design-led strategy thinking for growth in many countries across Europe and Asia including Hangzhou, Istanbul, New Dehli, Rio deJaneiro, Shanghai, Tallinn, Vienna and Wuxi to audiences ranging in number from 20 to 2000.

Design Juries

I have been invited as a juror onto the Red Dot Award (Germany), Design Management Europe (DME), the China Red Star Design Award and the national German Design Award (2016 and 2017). I am a previous Chair of the Estonian State Design Award.