Eric Sillies
Senior Product Designer
LPK
Eric Sillies studied industrial design at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning (DAAP) and is a senior product designer at LPK, a global brand design agency in Cincinnati.
This past year he added something he never expected to his resume: winner of a reality TV show! Sillies entered the Driver vs Driver competition—a challenge on the Golf Channel—to design the next driver for Wilson Golf. His design, the Wilson Staff Triton, prevailed and is now available in stores and is being played on the PGA tour by professional golfers.
Innovating as an Outsider
How does one person design tomorrow’s world-class driver when they don’t know with it takes to make a golf club? In short, they do not. Innovation like this requires a team effort, and as Eric Sillies found out, being an outsider makes all the difference.
In addition to his day job as a consultant, his journey—from ideation, to pitch and all the way through to development—highlights how being an outsider can be an advantage in innovation.
