Clay Chandler, Executive Editor, Asia, FORTUNE; Chair, Brainstorm Design
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TechTranscript
00:00 Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the MGM COTI
00:04 and to Brainstorm Design 2023.
00:06 It's great to see you here in Macau.
00:09 We're delighted to be in this city,
00:11 and we'll talk a little bit about that in a minute,
00:13 the significance of being in Macau.
00:15 But first, I wanna try to just share with you
00:17 a design moment that comes from Silicon Valley.
00:21 The year was 2021, and at the height of the pandemic,
00:25 Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi was going stir-crazy.
00:29 He felt trapped in his San Francisco home,
00:32 trying to run the company's ride-hailing
00:33 and food business remotely.
00:36 He remembered later in an interview with Fortune
00:38 that he wanted to get the hell out of the house.
00:40 He wanted to do something constructive.
00:42 And so his solution to that dilemma
00:44 was to try moonlighting as an Uber driver.
00:48 First, he bought an e-bike,
00:49 and he anonymously delivered food
00:51 for the app on San Francisco's busy streets.
00:54 Then he expanded his experiment.
00:56 He bought a used Tesla Model Y
00:59 and began transporting riders around the city
01:01 under the pseudonym Dave K.
01:04 And what he discovered from that experience
01:06 did not please him.
01:08 The more he drove, the more frustrated he became.
01:11 It turns out that Uber's software
01:13 was incredibly difficult for drivers to use.
01:17 As a company, Dara later explained,
01:19 we were very much focused culturally on the rider
01:21 and the eater product because we used it ourselves.
01:24 But we didn't take pride in the driver product
01:25 because none of us drove.
01:28 For Dara, that was a revelation.
01:30 He called an all-hands meeting for Uber staff
01:32 where he delivered a stinging presentation
01:34 with a now-infamous title, Why We Suck.
01:38 Well, that got a lot of attention,
01:39 but Dara's epiphany that there is power in empathy,
01:43 that understanding users can help your company
01:45 suck a little less, is really at the heart
01:47 of what brainstorm design is all about.
01:50 Five years ago, Fortune editors convened
01:53 the first brainstorm design conference in Singapore
01:55 because it had become clear to us
01:57 that a large and growing number of Fortune 500 companies
02:00 were using the mindset and the methods of designers
02:03 to better understand their customers,
02:05 to hang on to those customers,
02:06 and to drive genuine business value.
02:08 We thought that was a big deal,
02:11 and for at least two reasons.
02:12 One is that we saw that the great forces of the modern age,
02:15 globalization and digitization,
02:17 were dismantling traditional barriers
02:19 to entry in nearly every sector of the economy.
02:22 Large firms could no longer rely
02:24 on manufacturing capacity, a superior supply chain,
02:27 or established distribution networks
02:29 to defend their market position from challengers.
02:31 The rise of China and other emerging economies,
02:34 combined with newfangled technological developments
02:36 like big data, or the Internet of Things,
02:39 automation, and artificial intelligence,
02:41 were combining to flatten and commodify
02:43 traditional back-end defenses.
02:45 In this brave new world, design offered a way
02:48 for companies to focus on the front end of their operations,
02:51 where they actually connected with customers.
02:54 A second reason was complexity.
02:56 We saw that design could help bring order and coherence
02:59 to the chaos of our increasingly hyper-connected world.
03:02 It seemed to us that design had emerged as something more
03:05 than just a middle management function.
03:07 Design was no longer just about marketing,
03:09 and branding, and packaging.
03:10 More and more, we saw that innovative firms
03:12 were elevating designers to the C-suite.
03:14 They were embracing a design perspective
03:16 as central to corporate structure, strategy, and culture.
03:20 And so we thought we should talk about that.
03:21 We should bring people together.
03:23 We organized a conference that convenes designers
03:26 from a wide array of different experiences.
03:29 Classical designers, the people who make stuff,
03:32 automobiles, appliances, buildings, whole cities.
03:37 We convened commercial designers,
03:39 people who think a lot about processes,
03:41 not so much just about how things look, but how they work.
03:44 Think about companies like IDEO, or McKinsey,
03:46 or Accenture, or BCG.
03:49 We convened digital designers who worry
03:51 about user experience, who create apps,
03:53 who help customers to navigate websites.
03:55 And we tried to connect all those designers
03:57 to business leaders, people who may not be design experts,
04:01 but who make key decisions involving resources,
04:03 people, technology.
04:06 This year, we're paying particular attention
04:08 to how artificial intelligence is transforming
04:10 the designer's role.
04:11 Hence, our theme for the year, Empathy in the Age of AI.
04:15 What does human-centric design look like in an age
04:17 when more and more decisions are being delegated
04:19 to algorithms and robots?
04:21 Will AI help companies better understand or serve customers,
04:24 or will it create new barriers between them?
04:27 We also hope to delve into other topics,
04:29 including how AI is shaking up the art market,
04:33 design's role in the global race
04:34 to dominate the electric vehicle market,
04:36 designing immersive experiences,
04:38 and how design can help achieve
04:40 social and humanitarian goals.
04:42 It's fitting that we will engage
04:44 in all these conversations here in Macau,
04:46 a city with a long history as a global trade hub
04:48 that is now in the midst of its own radical redesign.
04:52 We hope that in some small way,
04:53 these conversations will contribute to Macau's effort
04:56 to reestablish this city as a global center
04:58 for art, culture, creativity, and design.
05:01 You'll likely by now have noticed the books outside
05:04 that are on display around the room.
05:06 These are titles that make up
05:07 the Stanford Design School's Design Library.
05:10 It's a 12-book publishing partnership
05:12 between the d.school and 10 Speed Press.
05:14 If you would like to take a set of these books home,
05:17 they'll be at the registration book.
05:18 Please do take them.
05:20 They're there for you.
05:21 And we wanna thank the d.school for that.
05:24 Today's program will be available in Mandarin translation,
05:27 which you can access by the headsets on the table
05:29 on channel one.
05:31 Before we begin, I wanna remind everyone
05:34 that of our reporting and social media rules,
05:37 what's said on stage is on the record,
05:39 but what's said over the table during a meal
05:40 or on a break is private unless agreed otherwise
05:43 by the parties involved.
05:45 We wanna thank our host partner, MGM Kotai.
05:48 We're delighted to be able to convene Brainstorm Design
05:50 in this hotel, which is one of the most
05:52 design-forward properties in Asia.
05:55 And we're especially pleased to welcome MGM China
05:57 co-chair, Panzi Hou, as a speaker later today.
06:00 We also wish to thank our strategic partner, Wulong Ye,
06:05 our partner, Cha Ling, and our media partner,
06:07 ATCO Worldwide.
06:09 I would like to acknowledge my Brainstorm Design colleagues
06:12 as well, Alan Murray, who's Fortune Media's CEO.
06:16 Thanks, Alan, for coming all this way to be here with us.
06:18 Wang Fang, the Shanghai Executive Editor for Fortune China.
06:22 Nicholas Gordon, who's Asia Editor for Fortune.
06:25 Claire Zillman, a Senior Editor for Fortune.
06:28 Tony Chambers, Brainstorm Design co-chair and founder
06:30 and Creative Director of TC and Friends.
06:32 You get a chance to meet all those people
06:34 as our program unfolds.
06:35 And with that, I would like to welcome
06:37 three of today's leading commercial designers
06:40 to discuss with us here on stage the value of design.
06:43 Please welcome Ben Shepard,
06:45 Partner at McKinsey & Company.
06:46 Cliff Kuang, UX Designer and author
06:49 of the outstanding book, User-Friendly.
06:52 And Katrina Alcorn,
06:53 former General Manager for Design at IBM.
06:56 Folks, why don't you come out and join us, please.
06:59 [BLANK_AUDIO]