11.22.16
Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand | Audio

S1E6: Douglas Powell


Douglas Powell is a Distinguished Designer at IBM who directs a global effort to bring human-centered design to a company with 360,000 employees in 170 countries.

How does visualizing ideas makes a difference for IBM?

We’ve got teams of dozens, often times hundreds of people. So these really wildly diverse teams. Lots of native languages spoken, lots of cultural backgrounds, lots of professional areas of expertise and points of view. Asking people to draw a picture of their idea neutralizes all of those language and cultural barriers.

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The Design of Business | The Business of Design is recorded at the Yale School of Management.

A big thanks to our launch sponsor, IBM.

Posted in: Business, Design of Business | Business of Design




Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand Jessica Helfand, a founding editor of Design Observer, is an award-winning graphic designer and writer. A former contributing editor and columnist for Print, Eye and Communications Arts magazine, she is a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale and a recent laureate of the Art Director’s Hall of Fame. Jessica received both her BA and MFA from Yale University where she has taught since 1994. In 2013, she won the AIGA medal.

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