Vol. 2: design-management.de

… I still owe these guys a (blog) favor: – Erik Roscam Abbink: Tagged for “5 Reasons For Brand Driven Innovation” – Mike Wagner: “Thin Slicing Meme” – Thomas Madsen-Mygdal: “5 Things Meme” I didn’t forget you, guys, but rather feel rattled by writing something meaningful … I’ll work on it!

I don’t want to go too sentimental here, but I’d still like to wish you all “Merry Christmas and a happy New Year”! For several weeks now I’d wanted to share some of my experiences from conferences, workshops and lectures on “Design Management” and “Corporate Blogs” … however as always too much other things to do [...]

Niti Bhan’s posting from today triggered me to raise my voice again here on this blog. In a somehow coquettish manner she is describing her little competition with another Design & Business Blogger called ‘Niblettes’ about who has the lowest amount of subscribers. In a not less than coquettish fashion she’s explaining that “The advantage of not [...]

In his fresh and narrative style my friend Mike Wagner over at “Own Your Brand” blog posted a very nice story in order to explain his ‘blog break’ for a couple of weeks. But now he’s back and I thought it might be a good idea to send a “still alive” message out to my [...]

Some years ago I’ve worked as a senior consultant for the “first integrated design corporation” in Germany: design.net ag (today the company is part of Peter Schmidt Group). Interestingly the company has been the springboard for several professionals who today are international experts in design management (but that’s a different story ;-) In any case [...]

I’ve been contacted by one of Germany’s biggest business magazines last week. As they are planning to publish a series of articles on Design, Creativity and Business Innovation they’ve asked me to inspire them with some according names and schools. While I clearly have my own internal list (but do not want to bias your [...]

Almost halftime of the year and you bet, I’m pretty busy these days. However not posting on a daily/weekly basis (I wish I could … ;-) doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten you, dear readers! I simply have to set priorities for a couple of weeks. In any case for similar situations in the future I’m currently re-thinking [...]

I think nobody is surprised to hear that understanding, talking and (sometimes) writing in English belongs to the basic skills of (design) managers these days. And based on my own experiences I can confirm that no native speaker expects you to talk or write almost perfect. Interestingly in the course of my recent efforts to [...]

I know, I know, my posting frequency isn’t at my “normal” level these days and it’s a mixture between workload due to other projects and some critical reflection on the direction and purpose of Vol. 2 which prevents me from posting more often these days … After all there is indeed a lot to write [...]

Understanding Marketing Psychology and The Halo Effect Al Ries explains the core idea of the “Halo Effect”. While being a model from Psychology an understanding of its basic idea can be very useful for design managers as well when it comes to negotiating with marketing and briefing your designers … (tags: Effect” marketing models versioning”)

I arrived at the DMI conference hotel slightly later than expected yesterday afternoon. However I was just in time since people were leaving for the reception sponsored by Heineken at the Heineken Experience Brewery. At the hotel lobby I’ve met some of the folks I’ve wanted to meet and we’ve had a nice walk to [...]

Well I’m almost off to Amsterdam to deliver my “Blogging for Design Leadership” Workshop on Friday for the 10th DMI European International Design Management Conference. From the list of participants (which seems to be the biggest ever with some 175 design professionals mainly from across Europe and the US) I’ve already spotted some friends, several former [...]

On the 10th of February at 23:00 hrs. my wife gave birth to the most beautiful baby in the world and Finn’s new brother: Ben :-) With 50 cm and 3.000 gr. he’s doing pretty well and Astrid is doing fine as well. We’re happy … P.S.: If Ben would have waited some 60 minutes longer [...]

It seems that the closer we come to Christmas posting frequency goes down not only at Vol.2: design-management.de. Therefore I’ve decided to take a short, intended “hiatus” and concentrate on some urgent work to be completed before Christmas as well as on recharging my batteries ;-) Consequently expect new, fresh postings in January 2006. However I still [...]

While DMI ( please forgive me, Michael Beirut ;-) just held its first conference on “Empowered Innovation” the next European conference titled “Design Leadership” to be held in Amsterdam/NL from March is already on its way …