L’ITALIANO CHE STA CAMBIANDO IL DESIGN – Design Chills con Mauro Porcini

Kid, I need you to draw me a product, a graphic. I don't need a manager. You have 20 years of experience to be a manager. Whoever does the product and the graphic needs to have the manager's mindset.

Hi everyone.

Let's try.

Eh.

Coffee.

Dog.

Wine.

Inspiration.

I enjoy it.

Long.

Hot.

All together.

Sparkling.

Control.

I love both. Political answer.

Now.

Give.

With heart.

Eh, gym.

Beach.

Delivery, unfortunately.

Pencil.

Del Piero.

Porcini or what?

Porcini.

I answered porcini without even understanding the second part.

Personality. With this last name, by the way, I was constantly teased as a kid, so I remember. Now I live abroad, it sounds Italian, super cool, right? But in Italy, how much they teased me as a kid, guys. Yeah.

We've all been through it. We've all been through it.

Well, design is an act of love. It goes right back to the origins of design, and for me design and innovation are the same thing. Design is nothing but innovation that puts the human being at the center of everything. And so if you think about it, the first act of design or innovation was when 3.3 million years ago — I researched this, I wanted to try to place it in time — but when, a long time ago, the first prehistoric man or woman decided to take two stones available in nature and rub one against the other to modify what was available in nature, committed, created the first act of design, the first act of innovation, that is, created a tool, an object that served a purpose. At first it was for hunting, preparing food, defending themselves. And so it's literally the primary needs of Maslow's pyramid, that is, survival and physiological needs. Then they began to create a whole series of tools to decorate their bodies, to express themselves, that is, the middle of Maslow's pyramid, connection, self-expression, and then they began to create a whole series of objects that we would call art today, so statuettes, cave decorations that transcended themselves to celebrate the gods, Mother Nature, and so on and so forth, the top of Maslow's pyramid. All these acts were acts of love for themselves and for the people in the closest community around them. So it starts from this act of generosity, of love. Then over time you hyper-specialize because there start to be a lot of objects, so you make some, you make others, you make others. At a certain point you say, 'Wait, I become very good at making hunting tools, you make tools to decorate our bodies, how do we exchange them?' Barter begins, then money is invented, then corporations, then companies, then brands, then mass market. At a certain point you forget why you're doing this stuff. You're doing it for love, for yourself, for the people around you, for your family, for your loved ones, and instead at a certain point you start thinking you're doing it to make money. At a certain point you do it for fame and you forget the reason we invented companies, work, and brands. And so 'Design is an act of love' is remembering why we started creating, what is the primary reason we organized ourselves, because we couldn't do everything alone, so we organized ourselves and through our purely human capacity, because there is no other species that can do it, we began to pass on our know-how to the next generations through storytelling. So today we have people who can make phones that let you communicate on video with someone on the other side of the world, spaceships, interesting chairs, little hats, we can make all this because we know how to pass on that specialization, but we've forgotten how it all started. And so 'Design is an act of love' is first of all a call to action to all the designers in the world, to all the creatives in the world, to all the entrepreneurs in the world: let's remember why we're doing this. And so first of all it's an ethical, moral responsibility we must have, and we can also talk about the fact that it's also an incredible business opportunity.

Well, then everything in my case, as in the case of many other creatives, starts from a personal need, that is, in my opinion, the right thing to do, that is, seeing when I design a phone or a snack or anything as a user — my son, my daughter, my wife, my loved ones, my parents. When you embody the user with people you know, then you try to create something truly special, something that is functional but also emotionally interesting, that is sustainable, and so on and so forth. So it starts from that, we must have this kind of approach, it's a responsibility we have as designers, and by the way, it's what they taught us in school. I studied at Politecnico, that's what they taught us.

But there is a business opportunity. If it were only a moral, ethical thing, maybe companies might be more or less interested. When it comes to business, it's a different situation. What is the business opportunity? We live today in a world where anyone can have an idea and must have access to interesting financing through this proliferation of investment funds, incubators, the search for the new idea, to create the new startup. The cost of manufacturing is dropping thanks to globalization, new technologies, and now AI will open up even more opportunities to create your product not from the garage but from the comfort of your bedroom if you want, from the couch, if you want, yes, if you want. And then you can go directly to the end user, selling them your product through e-commerce and building your brands through social media and digital platforms. So these were the areas where multinationals in the past created their big barriers to entry, made of production scale, communication, distribution — in other words, translated: the more money you had to produce, the harder it was to compete against you if you were a startup. The more money you had to communicate — these big companies have billions of dollars in communication budget. Try competing with that kind of budget. And then, from a distribution standpoint, if you had access to the big distributors, the big retailers, these big retailers rarely gave access to small startups, small entrepreneurs. Today, however, the playing field is...

So this means that the traditional barriers to entry are much less solid, and so you can have an exceptional product from a functional standpoint, but maybe it's not beautiful and the competitor attacks you on that. You can have a functional, beautiful product but it's not sustainable, the new startup attacks you on that. You can have all of this, but you don't have good service, you don't have a good retail experience and they get you there. So, in short, you must have total excellence across all dimensions, because if you have an area of weakness — whereas before there was this dynamic equilibrium between big companies, big brands, so that was the industry, you went to the supermarket, that's what you found and there was no choice, now there are alternatives. And so the strongest competitive advantage you can create, whether as a big company or a small reality, is to create a culture totally obsessed with the human being, a culture of love for the human being, so that even if you have an exceptional product from a functional standpoint with a very powerful brand that has crazy margins, crazy revenues, but it's still not beautiful or not sustainable or not healthy or lacks something — people with that kind of culture, starting with the designers, we usually have that kind of culture, feel sick until you have the perfect product, until you have the product that truly has all those characteristics. In the past this wasn't necessary in a company. If there was a dynamic equilibrium and that product was super profitable, don't touch it. Today, in this new kind of reality, you have to touch it, especially when you have great success, particularly because you have no way of truly monitoring how the competitor will attack you because everything moves at the speed of light, it's not predictable, you can't monitor the other big company because maybe it comes at you from another geographic area, from a small startup, and so the culture of love for the product, for the user, this human-centric culture, as they say in English, is the most powerful competitive advantage you can create for your company, the meta competitive advantage above all others.

Well, it's a beautiful question because obviously you've caught the great dilemma. From a personal standpoint, I'm 50 today, so when I made the decision I was 49. Perfect life, a dream. I come from a normal Italian family. We grew up — the first five years of my life, there were four of us in one room where we slept, and then we managed to get a house where my brother and I could share a bedroom. That was already a big achievement, like the classic — my first car was this beat-up 127, and it's the classic story of so many Italian kids. So I find myself catapulted to New York with a beautiful house in Manhattan, an incredible villa in the Hamptons, and then I had kids late, so while I was talking with Samsung my wife was pregnant with our second child, so a child was on the way. A perfect job for her too, as head of branding and experience for Golden Goose for the Americas, and at PepsiCo they loved me, everything was perfect, a perfect life. But I'm a person who always seeks new stimuli, who always tries to innovate, who has preached this to the world, I've written it in books, I talk about it in interviews, because it's what I truly believe in, and so that offer arrived and I said, look, first of all it comes from a company I admired. My experience starts in tech, I did my thesis on wearable computers with Politecnico di Milano and at Philips, and then I joined Philips. At the time they were dreams, you imagined that kind of reality 20 years out. And those 20 years passed, it became reality, and it seemed almost as if someone up above had looked down. And truly — and think, that had always been my passion. Tech had always been my passion. I did five years of university. I met Stefano Marzano, the head of design at Philips, in my first year of university, and for those five years I dreamed of working at Philips, that passion. I finish doing my thesis on wearable technologies, then I join Philips, I leave Philips to join Cecchetto to create my own company, but even there in the end in tech, though doing things completely different from tech product design, that is, trying to figure out how to make the most of the digital that was arriving, creating business opportunities that went from crypto — which wasn't called that yet, but we were already thinking about a digital currency — to a whole series of products literally from the digital world to digital content, I don't know, for 883, the CDs for 883, so that whole world, and then I join 3M and it's 10 years of tech, so 13 years of my career in tech, and then at a certain point there's this total anomaly, which is a food and beverage company asking me to join. That was the first leap into the void, because at 3M I had touched so many territories, working with NASA, working with consumer electronics companies, cars, a bit of everything, but I had never done food and beverage in my life. And in fact that was a nice transition, so first leap into the void, and then there — so 13 years, first 13 years tech, and then the second 13 years CPG, and I learn the world of marketing, branding, experience. And it really seems, when Samsung arrived, that I had spent those 26 years preparing for the great challenge that was my childhood dream.

PepsiCo, when they announced it to employees, sent this email to all employees saying that I was leaving the company and they couldn't disclose where I was going. I hadn't even told PepsiCo. I had told PepsiCo I'm chasing my childhood dream, and that's how they communicated it: 'Mauro is going to chase his dream.' And so it all comes back around, but it's as if once again God, Mother Nature with a force — depends on what you believe in — said, 'Okay, you have to prepare for that challenge.' And what I bring to the tech world is a knowledge of that world, my passion, my first 13 years of career, but beyond that I'm one of those who tried every gadget that came out, the smart glasses, the new phone, I was always experimenting. But then all this experience in the food and beverage, CPG, branding world, which I think is important in the tech world, and then the leadership experience in these multinationals, obviously.

It's like when footballers go to Real Madrid, those things, I say, I've been chasing this moment my whole life.

But yes, I don't even know if I answered your question, but I can't talk in books, in interviews about 'get out of your comfort zone' and not do it, but the reality is that I talk about it because I need it, and I had reached the ultimate comfort zone. In New York and at PepsiCo, even though I kept inventing new challenges for myself continuously and there were many, I wasn't looking for a job outside, but when it arrived, when I thought tech, there were a couple of companies I would have considered and one was Samsung, and so at that level, you know. And so when it arrived, and a company that I had monitored for years, I hired people from Samsung for years — when I left 3M, when I moved from 3M to go to the United States, and so I left Europe and I had to find a head for Europe, I hired Monica Riva, Monica della Riva, who became the head of design for 3M in Europe and at Samsung, and today she's the chief design officer of T-Mobile Deutsche Telekom, which also has T-Mobile. And so yes, it wasn't easy, but we went, and I have to thank my wife too, this is important because often the people who are by your side aren't mentioned. My wife had a beautiful job too, a perfect life, she was pregnant, a child was about to arrive, moving to the other side of the world. She's an international person, born in Italy, first five years of her life in Haiti, then she moved, she returned to Italy from 5 to 12, then at 12 she moved to Beirut until 22, then to New York, but she had never been in her life to Asia, with the exception of a quick trip to Singapore. So a woman like that who says, 'You know what? Let's go,' and not just to support her husband, but because she has that same spirit of adventure. And when we arrived in Seoul, I'm busy at astronomical levels, as you can imagine, always on the run, always at full speed. And there's this woman with two children — I try to dedicate as much time as possible to the family, but obviously there are limits — and she tells me, 'Don't worry, I'm here,' and she's exploring the city, enjoying the city, happy to discover new cultures, she's made friends, she's carved out a whole series of things to do, she's enjoying the children. So if she had said, 'No, I want to keep my job,' I wouldn't have accepted Samsung, because at this stage of my life I don't want to go. There are people who say, 'Well, I'll go, the family stays behind at a distance.' That wasn't it, I respect those decisions, but that wasn't what I wanted at this stage of my life. So if she hadn't said yes, it wouldn't have happened. And then once we went, it's easy, maybe you say yes, you jump in, but if she didn't have this open mindset and this ability to adapt to those environments, it wouldn't have happened. So often, I repeat, entrepreneurs, designers are put in the window, whether men or women, but no one talks about the support system around them that guarantees that kind of success. It supports you, or in opposite situations it destroys you. Certainly.

Real life. Real life where...

Everything else that happens in a personal career...

Here. Choose your partners wisely.

There are many instincts we have, I imagine there are many young people who follow us. But in the end, the person you choose, in the best case scenario, must be your life partner. So understanding which are the people with whom you can share that journey, that path, knowing that in difficult moments they'll support you, and you must be ready to do the same for the other person.