It’s always gratifying when people reach out to me for career advice. It reminds me that I am getting to a somewhere that other people want to go- and I think there are few enough experience strategy types that it’s sometimes hard to measure my progress. Plus Method is hiring and I personally looking to build out the Strategy team, so the timing is great.
In response to one such request, I dug up this presentation I made at the Haas School of Business in 2006. I think a lot of the thinking is still relevant to the market today. I think one difference is that the (MBA) education system has caught up to the whole design/innovation/strategy approach, particularly in the form of the Stanford d. school program. I would have loved to get that kind of training - I feel like I’ve had to feel my own way through most of my career. So I am always happy to pay it back. Drop me a line in you want to chat!
Here’s the post, which originally appeared on Threeminds on 05/01/06
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Last week I had the opportunity to guest judge final projects for an unusual business school class taught at my alma mater, the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. Design as a Strategic Management Issue is one of several electives that teach design literacy to MBA candidates and graduate students from the Engineering and Information Management programs. In this project-based class, teams of students have the opportunity both to manage a design project, and to act as designers for a website, a package, or a naming and logo project. I took the class myself about six years ago, and it was one of my inspirations to start a career as a strategist in creative services.
With that in mind, I gave a short presentation on Careers in Creative Services at the end of class. It’s written for an audience of soon-to-be-graduating MBA’s, but it speaks broadly to the evolution of the agency world from my perspective, and specifically to the current state of the art- Experience Design - as a way to combine the best elements of brand advertising, direct marketing, customer insights, and usability. Here is a PDF of the presentation with brief speaking notes. Download mcornes_haas.pdf
