Chief Design Officer, PepsiCo, Inc.
Mauro Porcini joined PepsiCo in 2012 as its first ever Chief Design Officer. In this newly created position, Mauro is infusing design thinking into PepsiCo’s culture and is leading a new approach to innovation by design that impacts the company’s product platforms and brands, which include Pepsi, Lay’s, Mountain Dew, Gatorade, Sodastream, Tropicana, Doritos, Lifewtr, bubly, Aquafina, Cheetos, Quaker, 7Up, Mirinda, Naked, amongst many others. His focus extends from physical to virtual expressions of the brands, including product, packaging, events, advertising, fashion and art collaborations, retail activation, architecture, and digital media. He leads teams based in New York City, Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, Orlando, Miami, London, Dublin, Moscow, Cairo, New Delhi, Shanghai, Bangkok, Mexico City, Sao Paulo and Johannesburg.
Mauro is the host of his own successful video podcast “In Your Shoes - with Mauro Porcini” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube, where he interviews inspiring personalities from the creative community worldwide.
In 2020 he became a presenter and judge on the TV shows New York by Design and America by Design, airing on CBS and Amazon Prime Video.
In 2021 his first book was released in Italian, L’età dell’eccellenza – Come innovazione e creatività possono costruire un mondo migliore, published by Il Saggiatore.
Prior to joining PepsiCo, Mauro served as the first ever Chief Design Officer at 3M, where his mission was to build and nurture a design sensitive culture in a technology driven global corporation. His teams, based in the US, Italy, China and Japan, have won many of the world’s most prestigious design and innovation awards.
Mauro began his professional career at Philips Design and then created his own design firm, Wisemad Srl, in Italy with the celebrated entertainment producer and music star Claudio Cecchetto. His work on wearable technologies has been showcased at the Louvre in Paris as well as the Seoul Art Center.
Mauro sits on the Board of Directors of the Design Management Institute, the Italy-America Chamber of Commerce and La Scuola d’Italia in New York, and on the advisory councils of other design and art institutions. He currently lives in New York City.
The Journey of Building Design Culture into Multi-national Corporations
Mauro Porcini joined PepsiCo in 2012 as its first Chief Design Officer and began infusing design thinking into the company’s DNA, leading a new design-led innovation approach across its iconic food and beverage portfolio. Mauro will detail PepsiCo’s journey to further integrate design into the culture of the organization around the world, unlocking opportunities for the products and the brands of today and inventing the ones of the future. He will highlight the importance of “co-conspirators” to drive design thinking across global organizations; he will touch on the intersection of design and sustainability; and he will share his belief about the importance of being “human-centered” to be able to drive breakthrough innovation and generate meaningful and loved brands.
Corporations Need Designers More Than Ever: Are We Really Ready for This Challenge?
Mauro Porcini will discuss introducing design-led thinking into a business organization to drive innovation and growth. By blending all the different faces of design—from industrial to brand, from digital to interior, from UX to strategy—under one organization and one vision, a company can craft relevant, meaningful and engaging user experiences. He will also delve into the role of design in bridging the worlds of business, R&D, insights and manufacturing to increase overall quality, relevance and speed to market of your company innovation process.
Panelist: The Future of Design Leadership
Clearly we are in a new frontier. Design is so relevant to the core of every business, that there are now new converging interests in design leadership. What is the future of design leadership? By the end of this conference, we will be closer to finding out.
This last session is not a concluding summary of the conference, rather, it’s a fresh perspective as an open dialog with some of the world’s most advanced design leaders including: Eric Quint, 3M; Klaus Kaasgard, Intuit; Sean Carney, Philips; Carole Bilson, IDSA, DMI; Mauro Porcini, PepsiCo; Nasahn Sheppard, REI; Ernesto Quinteros, J&J; and Steve Kaneko, FIDSA, Microsoft.
The panel, led by Thomas Lockwood, will explore alternative futures and address some of the most curious and challenging questions. Who really leads design—designers or business people? As a design leader, what is your greatest challenge? Do design leaders need business degrees, and vice versa? Is design leadership fun? What’s the future for designers in corporate, consultancy and independents? What’s the career path for an industrial designer that wants to stick with designing, or shift into leading?
Who leads experience design—ID, UX or customer service? Do industrial designers need to dive into holistic user experience design? Is design becoming a brand, an experience or a commodity? What are the trends in design leadership, and what are some possible future scenarios? How should an industrial designer prepare for the future?
This is not the end of the conference; it is the beginning of the future.
