Janine Benyus
Janine is a biologist, innovation consultant and author of six books, including her latest - Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. In Biomimicry, she names an emerging discipline that seeks sustainable solutions by emulating nature's designs and processes, for example solar cells that mimic leaves. In 1998, Janine co-founded a bio-inspired innovation consultancy called Biomimicry Guild. She is currently creating a public database of biological literature with Google and the Rocky Mountain Institute. To help further Biomimicry education and research, she recently founded the non-profit Biomimicry Institute.

http://www.biomimicryguild.com

Ayse Birsel     
Ayse designs with Bibi Seck from their studio Birsel + Seck in New York. Fueled by curiosity, disrespect for existing solutions and a love for drawing as a way to think, they design products for Herman Miller, Hewlett Packard, HBF, Merati, Target and Acme. Ayse is the designer of the zoë Washlet, for the Japanese manufacturer TOTO, unofficially coined the world’s most comfortable toilet seat. She is also the designer of the Resolve office system for Herman Miller, which is in MoMA’s permanent collection.

http://www.birselplusseck.com

Bill Breen
Bill is the Senior Projects Editor and a founding editor of the team that launched Fast Company magazine in November 1995. He edited major sections of the magazine and helped it win a number of awards, including the National Magazine Award for General Excellence. He conceived and launched Fast Company's annual, best-selling issue on business and design, "Masters of Design." He edited previous signature issues on leadership and innovation, and created the annual feature package, "Fast Cities."

www.fastcompany.com

Tim Brown
Tim Brown is CEO and president of IDEO. In addition to the design of new offerings for the world's leading brands, IDEO’s work addresses emerging themes such as sustainability, the design of communities, health and wellness, and enterprise for people in the world’s lower income groups. Tim is a leading voice on the value of design thinking in business and society. His ideas and experience are widely sought in industry, academia, and the nonprofit community. He participates in the World Economic Forum at Davos, and in 2006 he spoke in a series of sessions including the closing plenary. Tim joined IDEO in 1987 after earning his MA in design from the Royal College of Art in London.

http://www.ideo.com

Cat Chow     
Cat Chow believes in conceptual purity that is achieved through an economy of language. "Design is sometimes excessive. I am interested in making the biggest impact by saying the least." Elegantly simple in form, yet complex in construction, her labor-intensive work, which began as a series of garments, is fascinating for its intricacy and use of common materials in unexpected ways. Her work has been exhibited in numerous design, art and contemporary craft exhibitions nationwide. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn.

http://www.cat-chow.com

Anthony Dunne
Anthony Dunne is professor and head of the Design Interactions department at the Royal College of Art in London, and a partner in the design practice Dunne & Raby. His work with Fiona Raby uses design as a medium to stimulate discussion and debate amongst designers, industry and the public about the social, cultural and ethical implications of existing and emerging technologies. He has written several books including Design Noir with Fiona Raby (Princeton Architectural Press) and Hertzian Tales (The MIT Press).

http://www.dunneandraby.co.uk

Mark Dziersk                                                
Mark is VP of industrial Design at LAGA, an International Branding, Design and Innovation firm, where he's responsible for design and innovation management. Widely recognized as an expert in his field, Mark is quoted regularly in The Wall Street Journal and other national publications.  He has served as President of IDSA, Executive Editor of Innovation Magazine, and has received numerous awards for design excellence. Mark also holds over 100 US product design and engineering patents.

http://www.laga.com

Hartmut Esslinger    
Hartmut is the founder of frog design, one of the world’s leading strategic-creative consulting firms, and according to BusinessWeek the first superstar of high-tech design. In 1969, Esslinger founded frog design in his native Germany and sparked a design revolution with his unique emotional and cultural style.  His work has defined the modern consumer aesthetic with such revolutionary products as Sony's original Trinitron television, the Apple Macintosh, and Lufthansa’s brand and fleet image.  In 1994, Esslinger's company brought its industrial design prowess also to the world of digital media, creating and implementing convergent user experiences across hardware and software.

http://www.frogdesign.com

Naoto Fukasawa
Naoto leads his design practice in Tokyo. The excellence of his work has been recognized all over the world and he has received more than fifty design awards. He teaches, runs workshops for designers, advises companies about policy, but most of all he designs. His mobile phones for KDDI, work for Muji, and projects for the best known European companies, have all garnered world wide attention. His philosophy is influenced by a combination of modern international design and traditional Japanese craft. Phaidon have published a monogram of his work.

http://www.naotofukasawa.com

Barney Hatt
For the past two years Barney has collaborated on the design of the Tesla Roadster, resolving 2D sketches into a full size clay model as part of the process to create an elegant and dynamic skin for this exciting new car. His twelve years at UK based Lotus Design have demanded everything from conceptual brainstorming, illustration and model-making, right through to supporting full engineering feasibility. He has worked in house and for outside clients alike, on projects ranging from production vehicles to one-off racing cars to chronograph watches.

http://www.grouplotus.com

Suzanne Gibbs Howard
Suzanne is a Design Director who focuses on enhancing Ideo’s practice of Human Centered Design. She specializes in understanding behavior, articulating insights about human needs, and using this knowledge to drive design, brand, and business strategies. She has worked in archaeology, museum exhibit design, teaching and has been a dot commie. Her perspective comes from a highly interdisciplinary study of the social sciences, including art history, anthropology and African studies, with a Master's degree from the University of Chicago where she focused on cultural anthropology and the history of religions.

http://www.ideo.com

Hiroshi Ishii    
Hiroshi is a Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, at the MIT Media Lab. His research focuses upon the design of seamless interfaces between humans, digital information, and the physical environment. At the MIT Media Lab, he founded and directs the Tangible Media Group pursuing a new vision of Human Computer Interaction (HCI): "Tangible Bits." His team seeks to change the "painted bits" of GUIs to "tangible bits" by giving physical form to digital information, and has presented their vision of "Tangible Bits" at a variety of academic, industrial design, and artistic venues.

http://tangible.media.mit.edu/

Lorraine Justice
Lorraine Justice is Congress Coordinator for CONNECTING’07 on behalf of the Icsid Executive Board. She is currently the Swire Chair and Head of the School of Design at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Dr. Justice was responsible for co-organizing the First China-USA Industrial Design Conference in Beijing, and the first Doctoral Education in Design Conference in Ohio. She also serves on the advisory board of two international design journals, Design Issues and The Design Journal, as well as a jurist and reviewer for international conferences.

http://www.sd.polyu.edu.hk

Brenda Laurel
Brenda Laurel is a designer, researcher and writer. Her work focuses on interactive narrative, human-computer interaction, and cultural aspects of technology. She currently serves as chair of the new Graduate Program in Design at California College of the Arts. Her career in human-computer interaction spans over twenty-five years. Brenda was one of the founding members of the research staff at Interval Research Corporation in Palo Alto, California, where she coordinated research activities exploring gender and technology, and where she co-produced and directed the  Placeholder Virtual Reality project.

http://www.tauzero.com

Sam Lucente
All of Corporate America seems to be thinking about innovation, but few managers have a closer view than Sam Lucente, whose desk sits at the intersection of design, innovation, and customer experience. Sam leads HP’s design practice in creating world-class designs across all customer touch points to build an iconic brand. His work entails building a community of design professionals that use design as a strategic business tool and infuse the company’s products and services with a unique HP look and feel. This drives efficiency, makes offerings more competitive, and creates a better experience for HP’s customers.

http://www.hp.com

branko Lukic
branko Lukic is cofounder and partner of non·object.  Entrepreneur and master of the unexpected, Branko is a design experience visionary and author of the soon to be released non·object book. He won his first design contract at the age of 18. Since then, he has worked in industrial and product design, branding, graphic design and communication, digital media and conceptual product development. He was a lead industrial designer at IDEO and frogdesign, and before that in Serbia he cofounded Okapi Group and netto dvs. He holds many patents and has won many national and international design awards.

http://www.nonobject.com

Eunsook Kwon
An associate professor and the director of the industrial design program at the University of Houston’s Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture, Eunsook has developed the curriculum of the new program and built the program as a hub for the design community in the southern United States. Kwon has published and lectured throughout the world about creative design thinking and design strategy development. She has consulted to numerous corporations, including Amore Pacific Co., and Samsung, and has conducted private educational programs for government agencies and corporations.

http://www.uh.edu/idesign/

Ezio Manzini
Ezio is Professor of Industrial design at Politecnico di Milano, and Director of the “Unit of Research DIS-Design and Innovation for Sustainability.” His research interests include strategic design, design for sustainability, and design for social innovation, with a focus on scenario building and solution development. He has published widely and worked to move design thinking forward around the world, with academic appointments in Hong Kong, Japan, and the Netherlands, as well as his native Italy, where he was Scientific Director and Vice President of Domus Academy from 1893 to 1995.

http://www.sustainable-everyday.net

Roger Martin
Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, Roger has a clear vision of the contribution that design can make to business, and shows us why conversations between designers and business people are often fraught with misunderstandings. He is persuasive as he articulates the value of design thinking. He is also a professor of strategic management at the Rotman School. His research interests lie in the areas of global competitiveness, integrative thinking, business design and corporate citizenship.

http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca

Stefano Marzano
Stefano is CEO and Chief Creative Director of Philips Design, the international in-house design group at Philips responsible for all design work within the company. Both Stefano and Philips Design are widely recognized as being in the forefront of the design profession. He is a regular speaker at international design, business and technology conferences, and has published widely on design topics, being the author or editor of a number of books. In addition to his responsibilities at Philips, Stefano takes a keen interest in design education.

http://www.philips.com/design

Fiona Raby
Fiona Raby is a partner in the design practice Dunne & Raby. Between 1995 and 2001 she led the Critical Design Unit with Anthony Dunne in the CRD Research Studio at the Royal College of Art. Dunne & Raby projects have been exhibited and published internationally and are in the permanent collection of MoMA and the Victoria & Albert Museum. Fiona is currently exploring how a critical design approach can be applied to future scenarios in relation to the social and ethical impact of emerging technologies like bio- and nanotech.

http://www.dunneandraby.co.uk

Sir Ken Robinson
Sir Ken Robinson is an internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity, innovation and human resources. Now based in Los Angeles, he has worked with national governments in Europe and Asia, with international agencies, Fortune 500 companies, not-for-profit corporations and some of the world’s leading cultural organizations. Sir Ken is in high demand as an inspirational speaker with a unique talent for conveying profoundly serious messages with enormous humor, passion and wit. In 2003, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the arts.

http://www.sirkenrobinson.com

Hans Rosling
Hans is Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. He has spent two decades studying outbreaks of disease in remote rural areas across Africa. He co-founded the Gapminder Foundation to develop software that converts international statistics into moving, interactive and enjoyable graphics. The aim is to promote a fact based world view through increase use and understanding of freely accessible public statistics. His lectures using Gapminder graphics to visualize world development have won awards by being "humorous, yet deadly serious."

http://www.gapminder.com

Paul Saffo
Paul is a forecaster and essayist with over two decades experience exploring long-term technological change and its practical impact on business and society. He teaches at Stanford, and is on a research sabbatical from IFTF, where he has worked since 1985. He was the founding Chairman of the Samsung Science Board, and serves on a variety of other boards including the Long Now Foundation, the Singapore National Research Foundation Science Advisory Board. His essays have appeared in numerous publications, including The Harvard Business Review, Fortune and Wired.

http://www.saffo.com

Bibi Seck
Bibi designs with Ayse Birsel from their studio Birsel + Seck in New York. Fueled by curiosity, disrespect for existing solutions and a love for drawing as a way to think, they design products for Herman Miller, Hewlett Packard, HBF, Merati, Target and Acme. Bibi Seck was lead designer at Renault for 12 years, bringing Scénic I and II, Twingo II and Trafic to market. In 2002, he collaborated with Ayse on the design of a concept interior for Renault, leading to the creation of their studio.

http://www.birselplusseck.com

Richard Seymour
Richard is one of Europe’s best known product designers. Trained as a graphic designer and illustrator initially, his career has spanned multiple media and advertising, to creating Seymourpowell (with Dick Powell) in 1984. Richard and Dick have appeared on television extensively over the past few years, in two major series about design. They have recently been working on the design for the Virgin Galactic space tourism project, a service to be launched in 2008 for space flights at £200,000 per person, developed from the X-Prize winning suborbital rocket plane.

http://www.seymourpowell.com

Lawrence Speck                                               
Lawrence practices architecture and teaches at the University of Texas at Austin. He has won more than fifty architectural design awards over the last ten years.  His work has been included in all of the major U.S. architectural journals as well as in publications in Italy, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Australia and Brazil. He is interested in the work of visionary designer Norman Bel Geddes, and often acts as a docent to viewers of the Bel Geddes collection at the University, explaining how the work has changed America.  

http://www.pspaec.com

Alex Steffen
Alex is co-founder and executive editor of Worldchanging.com, a global nonprofit media collaborative dedicated to exploring tools, models, and ideas for building a better future.  Alex’s work has taken him around the world as an environmental journalist on four continents; has led him to provide strategic consultation to over fifty different environmental groups and foresight projects. He is also the editor of "Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century," released November 2006, from Harry N. Abrams Nooks, with more than 60 contributing authors.

http:// www.worldchanging.com

Bruce Sterling
While a Visionary in Residence at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Bruce wrote Shaping Things, a book about the future of design that hovers between science fiction and design fact. He is well known for his science fiction writing, and is always pushing the boundaries of expression, with blogs, columns, commentaries and rants. In his Wired magazine column, he coined the term buckyjunk, describing future, difficult-to-recycle consumer waste made of carbon nanotubes. He lives in Belgrade, when not traveling the world giving speeches and attending conferences.

http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Sterling

JB Straubel
JB is Chief Technical Officer at Tesla Motors, where he oversees the technical and engineering design of the world’s first all--electric sports car, capable of 0 to 60 mph in about four seconds, and the equivalent of 135 mpg. He is responsible for new technology evaluation, technical diligence review of key vendors and partners, IP and systems validation testing. Before joining Tesla, he worked closely with Burt Rutan at Scaled Composites to design a specialized high-altitude aircraft platform using a novel hydrogen-powered electric power plant.

http://www.teslamotors.com

Sarah Thielman
Sarah is a design manager at P&G, as well as the IDSA Mideast District VP,” but what she probably wouldn’t tell you is… “I have gobs of curly hair and a nose ring. I can't bend my thumb without bending my pointer finger. I can do the human pretzel. I love sushi and Indian food. I hate confrontation. I love color. I don't have the internet at home... or cable. I love cooking with cilantro and limes. I recycle and try to compost… sigh. I have restriction B on my driver's license and I'm an organ donor. I can whistle real loud through my fingers. I wear tall shoes so my pants fit my short legs. I am not claustrophobic... at all, and I just got a motorcycle…Vroom, vroom!”

http://www.pg.com

Toyoyuki Uematsu                                               
Toyoyuki is currently the Senior Advisor of Panasonic Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. . When he took over, he pulled together the designers in the company into a single unified organization, achieving remarkable success. He and his staff have tried to rigorously promote innovative design and establish a strong Panasonic design identity through comprehensive Universal Design. Their efforts, based on the business philosophies of “Protecting Ecology” and “Positively Contributing to Society,” have begun to be realized and have been recognized by many awards.

http://panasonic.co.jp/design/en

Tucker Viemeister
Tucker is VP Creative of RockwellGroup Experience Design (RED). He founded the collaborative Studio Red dedicated to innovation for Coca-Cola, now called RED, the team works with clients like Gap (Fourth & Towne), JetBlue (Terminal 5), Mercedes (events), and McDonald’s. He’s a Fellow of the Industrial Designers Society of America, was called “Guru” by BusinessWeek (8/97), “scruffy brand-meister” by the Architect’s Newspaper (2/06) and dubbed "Industrial Design’s Elder Wunderkind" when ID included him in America's hottest 40. A graduate from Pratt Institute, Tucker teaches at NYU's ITP, holds 32 US Utility Patents and was named after a car.

http://www.redrockwell.com

Beth Viner
Beth Viner is the Business lead for the Smart Space practice at IDEO, based in San Francisco. Beth takes a dual role working with design teams to help them understand how design and innovation will have impact for clients as well as working directly with clients to think strategically about what challenges and engagements IDEO can best help them to address. Beth works with Smart Space Clients involved in hospitality, retail, healthcare, real estate development, and education including Marriott International, Ritz-Carlton, Stanford University, American Red Cross, Bally Total Fitness, Allen-Edmonds and more.

http://www.ideo.com

Patrick Whitney
Patrick is the director of the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, and is the Steelcase/Robert C. Pew Professor of Design. He has published and lectured throughout the world about how to make technological innovations more humane, the link between design and business strategy, and methods of designing interactive communications and products. His writing has focused on new frameworks of design that respond to two transformations; the shift from mass-production to flexible production, and the shift from national markets to markets that are both global and "markets of one."

http:// www.id.iit.edu