Dr. Robert Blaich, FIDSA

2006 Personal Recognition Award Winner

Dr. Robert Blaich, FIDSA is truly one of the great patrons of good design, and is an advocate of design managers that passionately support their best designers with good solid business strategies.

He has vastly expanded the influence of the industrial design profession in the business world throughout his career. As vice president of design for Herman Miller, where he worked with Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson and other designers, as the Director of Design for Royal Philips Electronics, where he introduced advanced design strategies and grew the influence of the design organization, and now on the board of Teague, where he is helping to redesign and grow the company, he has shown exceptional leadership, innovative ideas and enormous passion for design as an equal partner with business disciplines.

Through his leadership in international organizations like ICSID, he has helped expand the influence of American design on the world stage. He lectures about design strategy around the world and authored the influential publication Product Design and Corporate Strategy.

His keen insight and expertise also have been utilized in his service to the boards of business and design schools. He also was involved in early public design awareness programs like Design Michigan, and is currently involved with the INDEX program for design promotion worldwide, among many others.

As a result of his accomplishments, the business world has a much greater understanding of—and appreciation for—the innovation of industrial design.