While I’ve returned from the DMI conference last Friday night, I’ve again had to leave to Frankfurt for conducting my last Open University MBA Strategy workshop for this semester on Saturday morning early. Consequently I’ve been quite tired and lazy on Sunday and I’ve had to catch up with my email yesterday … So, now’s time for another posting ;-)
As written in one of my previous postings I’ve arrived late on Thursday afternoon. Together with my Friday morning workshop (which according to the feedback I’ve received so far must have addressed expectations quite well) and the according Q&A afterwards only limited time has been left for networking and attending lectures.
Fortunately Erik Roscam Abbing from “branddriveninnovation.com” has already posted some of his impressions from the conference and you might want to read his musings on his blog. In any case I will also share some of my impressions from the conference allocated to some smaller postings as well.
So prior to commenting on the “experience” at the Heineken Brewery I’d like top raise your attention to “design flanders” a Belgian/Flemish government funded organization which objective is to “promote designers and their designs and stimulate companies and the public to use design.” In Amsterdam I’ve met their design management consultant Ingrid Vandenhout and while having a cold beer (erratum !Heineken! ;-) we’ve had a nice chat about her organization, blogs and open source acting.
Interestingly I’ve been on the “design flanders” mailing list for a while now and even though I must admit that I haven’t visited their website so far I highly appreciate their mailings which they send out regularly by post. Usually it’s a sophisticated designed poster illustrating and promoting the latest exhibitions or events organized by “design flanders”. However as said above the layout is so well designed that I even post them on the wall from time to time or at least keep them far longer on my desk than usual promotional mailings. Another Westminster MBA Design Management graduate Gabriele Krause (Proengine GmbH) shared the same experience and she outed herself as a serious collector of these posters ;-)
Actually Ingrid Vandenhout was quite excited about the appreciation we’ve showed for her work that I’ve promised her to write about “design flanders” here on my blog and get more people attracted to their organization. You can contact Ingrid at: >ingrid.vandenhoudt (at) designvlaanderen.be and ask her to be included in their mailing list. Doing so might also be a good idea for monitoring latest trends of young (Belgian/Flemish) designers since I’ve experienced them to be in the same tradition as Dutch design.
As noted above Ingrid is mainly in charge for co-ordinating design management activities at “design flanders” and you will find some interesting research reports and conference presentations at the design management section of their website. Furthermore in the “Publications” section you will find slides on a study on the impact of design implementation on business performance in Flanders (PPT-File) plus an according conference paper (PDF-File) to be downloaded for free. Even though the study is focused on Flanders the research design and accordingly insights might be a good inspiration for future research projects on a refined level as well.
