November 12, 2019 Welcome to Business x Design, a new newsletter on the transformative power of design. In this email, we share with you a special excerpt from John Maeda’s upcoming book. Plus, a dinner invitation. What else would you like to see from us? This newsletter is a work in progress supported by you, our readers. Reply to this email with your suggestions and feedback.
(Image courtesy of Penguin Random House)
As promised to you in the last edition of Business x Design, here is Fortune‘s exclusive advance excerpt of John Maeda’s new book on the nexus of design and tech.
How to Speak Machine is a provocative, nuanced, and entertaining chronicle of a six-year journey in which Maeda “traveled away from ‘pure’ design” to arrive at the conclusion that computational design is the most powerful design form of our age. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Here’s an anecdote about his influence as a thought leader. Maeda, who I spotlit last week, was an early and influential proponent of the idea that designers add unique value to business and tech decisions—and deserve a leadership role in companies. But recently, it seemed as if he’d changed his stance.
The backstory: His inaugural Design in Tech Report, presented at SXSW in 2015, called attention to the growing role of designers at tech giants like Google and Facebook, the surge in design firm acquisitions by firms like Accenture and McKinsey, and the flurry of design-led startups that had secured major venture capital.
A year later, those trends had only accelerated. In a second report, Maeda documented that ventures co-founded by designers accounted for more than a third of the year’s 25 top-funded startups, while one in 10 Fortune 100 firms had made design an executive priority. Maeda’s report declared triumphantly: “Design isn’t just about beauty; it’s about market relevance and meaningful results.”
So it came as a shock to many when, just after the release of this year’s Design in Tech Report, Maeda said in an interview with Fast Company, “In reality, design is not that important.”
Maeda—then a top executive at WordPress parent company Automattic—said that design should play a secondary role in tech companies rather than a leadership role. In his 2019 report, Maeda argued designers should be supporting actors who stop trying to upstage developers and product managers.
This provoked an uproar among designers, many of whom felt betrayed by one of the field’s most eloquent advocates. In his new book, How to Speak Machine, Maeda protests that his comments to Fast Company were “taken out of context from a twenty-minute phone interview.”
But he’s not exactly recanting.
“I honestly don’t believe that design is the most important matter today … Instead, I believe we should focus first on understanding computation. Because when we combine design with computation, a kind of magic results; when we combine business with computation, great financial opportunities can emerge.”
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Maeda will be our opening speaker at this year’s Brainstorm Design, held March 25-26, 2020 in Singapore. And fear not! We’ll also hear from classical and commercial designers: Cameron Adams, co-founder of Canva; YooJung Ahn, head of design at Waymo; Eva Lilja Lowenhielm, design manager at IKEA; Eric Quint, chief brand and design officer at 3M; Daan Roosegaarde, founder of Studio Roosegaarde; Ole Scheeren, chief designer at Buro Ole Scheeren.
You can check out highlights of past Brainstorm Design events—and register for your invitation for 2020—here.
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You’re invited to dinner: One of the world’s most extraordinary classical designers, the acclaimed Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, will be the guest speaker at a special design dinner in Tokyo on December 5. Brainstorm Design co-chair Tony Chambers and I are hosting him for a chat about his recent work, including projects like Japan’s National Stadium, the venue for next year’s Olympics opening ceremony. We have a few places left. Apply for an invitation here: brainstormdesignleadup@fortune.com
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More design news below, curated by my colleague Eamon Barrett.
Clay Chandler
Chair, Fortune Brainstorm Design
@ClayChandler
clay.chandler@fortune.com