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Allen Hammond Senior Entrepreneur in Residence, ASHOKA CEO, Healthpoint Solution

Allen Hammond is senior entrepreneur in residence and a member of the Leadership Group at Ashoka, entrepreneurs for the public, where he is applying novel solutions to rural connectivity and last-mile healthcare in emerging markets. For that purpose he is also serving as CEO of an Indian start-up company, Healthpoint Solutions Ltd. Prior to joining Ashoka, he was VP for Innovation at the World Resources Institute.

Dr. Hammond is also a serial entrepreneur, an expert in market-based solutions to poverty and a global leader in base of the pyramid (BOP) business strategies, and a widely-published author. He is principal author of The Next 4 Billion, a landmark study of BOP markets and has written or co-authored over 150 articles and 10 books, including Which World?: Scenarios for the 21st Century, focused on sustainable development. He holds degrees from Stanford and Harvard universities in engineering and applied mathematics.

Earlier in his career, Dr. Hammond helped to edit the international journal Science and went on to found and edit several national publications, including Science 80 86 (published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science), Issues in Science and Technology (published by the National Academy of Science), and the Information Please Environmental Almanac (published by Houghton Mifflin). In addition, he broadcast a daily radio program for 5 years (syndicated nationally by CBS).

Dr. Hammond has published extensively in the scientific, policy research, and business literature, including recent articles in Foreign Affairs ("Digitally Empowered Development," March, 2001) and the Harvard Business Review ("Serving the World’s Poor, Profitably," September, 2002, with C.K. Prahalad); has lectured widely; and has served as a consultant to the White House science office, to several U.S. federal agencies, to the United Nations, to a number of major corporations, and to several private foundations. Among other pursuits, he is a skier and small boat sailor.

Stuart Hart Samuel C. Johnson Chair in Sustainable Global Enterprise Founder, Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise and the Base of the Pyramid Learning Lab Professor of Management, Cornell University PhD, Michigan 347 Sage Hall, The Johnson School  Cornell University,  Ithaca, NY 14853 slh55@cornell.edu

Stuart L. Hart is the Samuel C. Johnson Chair of Sustainable Global Enterprise and Professor of Management at Cornell University’s Johnson School of Management. Before joining Cornell in 2003, he was the Hans Zulliger Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Enterprise and Professor of Strategic Management at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, where he founded the Center for Sustainable Enterprise and the Base of the Pyramid Learning Laboratory. Previously, he taught corporate strategy at the University of Michigan Business School and was the founding director of the Corporate Environmental Management Program (CEMP), now part of the Erb Institute.

Professor Hart is one of the world’s top authorities on the implications of sustainable development and environmentalism for business strategy. He has published over 60 papers and authored or edited six books. His article "Beyond Greening: Strategies for a Sustainable World" won the McKinsey Award for Best Article in the Harvard Business Review for 1997 and helped launch the movement for corporate sustainability. With C.K. Prahalad, Hart also wrote the path-breaking 2002 article "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid," which provided the first articulation of how business could profitably serve the needs of the four billion poor in the developing world. His new book, Capitalism at the Crossroads, was published by Wharton School Publishing in 2005. The second edition of the book with a new Foreword by Al Gore was published in 2007.

Representative Publications:

Simanis, E. and S. L. Hart (2009) "Beyond Selling to the Poor: Building Business Intimacy Through Embedded Innovation." Sloan Management Review forthcoming.

Simanis, E., Duke, D., and S. L. Hart (2008) "The Base of the Pyramid Protocol: Beyond ‘Basic Needs’ Business Strategies." Innovations Winter: 57-83.

Hart, S. L. (2007). Capitalism at the Crossroads: Aligning Business, Earth, and Humanity (2nd edition). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Wharton School.
Simanis, E. and S. L. Hart (2006) "Expanding the Possibilities at the Base of the Pyramid." Innovations Winter: 43-51.

Hart, S. and T. London (2005) Developing Native Capability: What Multinational Corporations Can Learn from the Base of the Pyramid." Stanford Social Innovation Review Summer: 28-33.

London, T. and S. L. Hart (2004) "Reinventing Strategies for Emerging Markets: Beyond the Transnational Model." Journal of International Business Studies 35: 350-370.

Hart, S. L. and S. Sharma (2004). "Engaging Fringe Stakeholders for Competitive Imagination." Academy of Management Executive 18(1): 7-18.

Hart, S. L. and C. M. Christensen (2002). "The Great Leap: Driving Innovation from the Base of the Pyramid." Sloan Management Review 44(1): 51-56.

Prahalad, C. K. and S. L. Hart (2002). "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid." Strategy + Business 26: 54-67. 

Prabhu Kandachar Professor- Industrial Design Engineering, Chairman, Design Engineering Department Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering Delft University of Technology Landbergstraat 15 2628 CE DELFT, the Netherlands Tel: +31.15.278.3034   Fax: +31.15.278.1839 p.v.kandachar@tudelft.nl

Prabhu Kandachar is extensively involved in projects involving students and businesses to identify opportunities as well as to design & prototype products and services for the Base-of-the-Pyramid (BoP). Issues covered include water, healthcare, energy, housing, etc., in countries like India, Indonesia, China, Brazil, Ghana, Tanzania, Honduras, Philippines, Pakistan, Madagascar, etc. He is also directing research work on some healthcare issues of the poor in developing countries. He has given several keynote lectures on this topic. His recent lecture was on Base of the Pyramid Strategy – Innovations & Poverty Reduction, at Copenhagen, during the opening of the BoP Facility (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Denmark) on 4th Dec. 2008. www.pppprogramme.com

Such "Putting People First" activities on BoP have also led to a multi-step project on enhancing the knowledge domain around BoP with the following results so far:

(1) A special issue of "Greener Management International (GMI)", edited by Prabhu Kandachar, released in June 2007, coinciding with: (2) A BoP Session during Greening of the Industry Network Conference 2007, which served as a platform for: (3) The book Sustainability Challenges and Solutions at the Base of the Pyramid: Business, Technology and the Poor, edited by Prabhu Kandachar and Minna Halme, with a foreword by Stuart Hart (August 2008), www.greenleaf-publishing.com coinciding with: (4) International Conference on Sustainable Innovations at the Base of the Pyramid, September 26–27, 2008, and (5) a Workshop on Wellbeing in Low-Income Communities on Dec. 15, 2008 with Professor Martha Nussbaum as keynote speaker, both at Helsinki School of Economics, Finland. http://www.hse.fi/bop Prabhu talked about Dilemmas during Design Interventions in this event. A conference on BoP with the focus on impact is planned to be held at Delft (Nov. 2009).

He was born and educated in India, with Master and PhD degrees in Engineering, at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Later at Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, he worked for a period of 5 years from 1975, on environmentally friendly technologies. During this period, he also got an opportunity to develop an affordable product for the foundry industry in Venezuela. Between 1980 and 1995, he worked at Fokker Aerospace, at Schiphol, near Amsterdam in various technical & management positions involving aerospace design. Since 1995, he has been with the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering (IDE) at Delft University of Technology.

Representative Publications:

Prabhu Kandachar et.al. (Ed), Design of Products and Services for the Base of the Pyramid, Oct. 2007, Delft University of Technology, ISBN 978-90-5155-034-4. http://www.io.tudelft.nl/bop

Prabhu Kandachar and Minna Halme, Introduction: An Exploratory Journey towards the Research and Practice of the Base-of-the-Pyramid, Special issue of "Greener Management International (GMI)", edited by Prabhu Kandachar, June 2007, ISSN 0966-9671. http://www.greenleaf-publishing.com/

Prabhu Kandachar and Minna Halme (Ed)., Sustainability Challenges and Solutions at the Base of the Pyramid:Business, Technology and the Poor, 2008, ISBN 978-1-906093-11-2 http://www.greenleaf-publishing.com/

Prabhu Kandachar and Minna Halme, Farewell to pyramids: how can business and technology help to eradicate poverty? in Sustainability Challenges and Solutions at the Base of the Pyramid: Business, Technology and the Poor, Prabhu Kandachar and Minna Halme (Ed)., 2008, ISBN 978-1-906093-11-2
http://www.greenleafpublishing.com/

Robert Kennedy Executive Director, William Davidson Institute Ross School of Business 724 East University Ave., Wyly Hall, Room 1724 Ann Arbor, MI 48109 1.734.764.8539 rekennedy@umich.edu

 Robert (Bob) Kennedy is Executive Director of the William Davidson Institute (WDI), one of the world’s leading research and educational institutions on developing countries. WDI pursues five major activities:

• Research — WDI’s research focuses on four areas: the globalization of service activities; operating in base of the pyramid markets; the business of healthcare, and the commercialization of GreenLeap technologies.
• Executive Education — WDI offers more than 40 executive education courses in approximately 20 developing countries each year.
• Development Consulting Services — involves delivering capacity building programs for development agencies such as USAID, the World Bank, and developing country governments.
• Educational Outreach — produces and distributes other teaching materials for use in business school programs.
• Promoting international activities at U-M — by supporting international action learning opportunities, summer internships, research, course development, and other needs.
  
  

Kennedy serves as the Tom Lantos Professor of Business Administration at Michigan’s Ross School of Business, where he serves as director of the school’s Global Initiative, which promotes and coordinates international research and educational opportunities for RSB faculty and students. He also teaches corporate strategy and international business courses in the MBA, EMBA, and Executive Education programs.

Kennedy is a well-known scholar, speaker, and educator. His research focuses on the opportunities and challenges facing businesses in developing countries and has been widely published in leading economics and strategy journals. He has authored more than 100 articles, chapters, notes, case studies, and computer exercises on emerging market issues. From 2002-2009, his teaching materials were used at every one of Business Week’s top 25 U.S. business schools.

Prior to becoming an academic, Kennedy worked as a consultant in more than 20 countries, and as a venture capital investor in central Europe and South Asia.

Kennedy recently completed a managerial book on offshoring (The Services Shift: Seizing the Ultimate Offshore Opportunity) for FT Press which was released in January 2009.

Representative Publications:

The Services Shift: Seizing the Ultimate Offshore Opportunity, (with Ajay Sharma), FT Press, January 2009.

"Survivorship and the Economic Grim Reaper," (with George Baker), The Journal of Law, Economics & Organization, vol. 18, No 2, October 2002.

"Strategy Fads and Competitive Convergence: An Empirical Test for Herd Behavior in Prime-time Television Programming," Journal of Industrial Economics, vol. L, March 2002.

"External Liberalization and Foreign Presence: Cross-Industry Evidence from Central Europe," Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, vol. 9.2, summer 2000.

Globalization and Development: Cases in National Economic Strategies, (with Richard H. K. Vietor), Fort Worth, TX: The Dryden Press, 2000.

"Competitive Shocks and Industrial Structure: The Case of Polish Manufacturing," (with Pankaj Ghemawat), The International Journal of Industrial Organization, vol. 17, August 1999.

"A Tale of Two Economies: Economic Restructuring in Post-Socialist Poland," World Development, v25.6, June 1997.

Ted London Director, BoP Research Initiatives William Davidson Institute Ross School of Business University of Michigan 724 E. University Avenue, Wyly Hall Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109 734-936-6996 tlondon@umich.edu

Ted London is a leading expert on the intersection of business strategy and poverty alleviation. Over the past two decades, his work has taken him to over 70 countries across the globe. In addition to research activities, Professor London has also served as a management advisor and educator for a wide variety of organizations exploring the role and impact of market-based strategies on the base of the pyramid. 

Professor London is a Senior Research Fellow at the William Davidson Institute (WDI) and on the faculty at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. At WDI, he directs the Base of the Pyramid Initiative, a program that champions innovative ways of thinking about more inclusive forms of capitalism. Professor London’s research centers on designing enterprise strategies and poverty alleviation approaches for low-income markets, assessing poverty reduction outcomes of business ventures, and developing capabilities for cross-sector collaborations. He has published numerous articles, reports, book chapters, and teaching cases and notes that focus on creating new knowledge with important actionable implications.

Prior to coming to the University of Michigan, Professor London was on the faculty at the University of North Carolina, where he also received his Ph.D. Before that, he held senior management positions in the private, non-profit, and development sectors in three continents. In addition to his Ph.D., he has an MBA from the Peter Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University and a Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Lehigh University.
Representative Publications:

London, T., Anupindi, R. & Sheth, S. 2009. Creating mutual value: Lessons learned from serving base of the pyramid producers. Journal of Business Research. (forthcoming).

London, T. 2009. Making better investments at the base of the pyramid. Harvard Business Review. 87(5): 106-113.

London. T. 2007. A Base-of-the-Pyramid Perspective on Poverty Alleviation. Washington, DC: United Nations Development Program. Growing Inclusive Markets Working Paper Series.

London, T. & Hart, S. L. 2004. Reinventing strategies for emerging markets: Beyond the transnational model. Journal of International Business Studies, 35(5): 350-370.

London, T., & Rondinelli, D. A. 2003. Partnerships for learning: Managing tensions in nonprofit organizations' alliances with corporations. Stanford Social Innovation Review, 1(3): 28- 35.

Jacqueline Novogratz Founder & Chief Executive Officer Acumen Fund 76 Ninth Avenue, Suite 315 New York, NY 10011 jnovogratz@acumenfund.org

Jacqueline Novogratz is the founder and CEO of Acumen Fund, a non-profit global venture fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of global poverty. Acumen Fund seeks to prove that small amounts of philanthropic capital, combined with large doses of business acumen, can build thriving enterprises that serve vast numbers of the poor. Its investments focus on delivering affordable, critical goods and services – like health, water, housing and energy – through innovative, market-oriented approaches. Acumen Fund currently manages more than $40 million in investments in South Asia and East Africa, all focused on delivering affordable healthcare, water, housing and energy to the poor. The organization also includes the Acumen Fund Fellows Program, focused on building the next generation of business leaders with an understanding of global issues and poverty. The organization has offices in New York, Pakistan, India and Kenya.

Prior to Acumen Fund, Jacqueline founded and directed The Philanthropy Workshop and The Next Generation Leadership programs at the Rockefeller Foundation. She also founded Duterimbere, a micro-finance institution in Rwanda. She began her career in international banking with Chase Manhattan Bank. She is currently on the advisory boards of Stanford Graduate School of Business, MIT’s Legatum Center, and Innovations Journal published by MIT Press. She serves on the Aspen Institute Board of Trustees and as a member of two World Economic Forum Global Agenda Councils, on Social Entrepreneurship and on Water. She is an Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellow, a Synergos Institute Senior Fellow, and she was recently honored with the 2009 CASE Leadership in Social Entrepreneurship Award. She is a frequent speaker at international conferences, including the Clinton Global Initiative and TED. She has an MBA from Stanford and a BA in Economics/International Relations from the University of Virginia. She speaks Spanish and French and has a working knowledge of Swahili.

Her recent best-selling memoir, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World, which will be featured as part of Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great New Writers program in May, chronicles her quest to understand poverty and challenges readers to grant dignity to the poor and to rethink their engagement with the world. (For more information on Acumen Fund, please visit www.acumenfund.org. For further details on Jacqueline’s book, go to www.thebluesweater.com.)

C.K. Prahalad Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor Ross School of Business, The University of Michigan R6396 Stephen M. Ross School of Business University of Michigan 701 Tappan St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1234 (734) 763-5573  ckp@umich.edu

Dr. Prahalad is more than an academic; he is one of the foremost business thinkers of our time. He was elected as the most influential living management thinker by Thinkers 50, The Times of London and Suntop Media. He has written five seminal books on strategy. His 1987 coauthored (with Yves Doz) book: The Multinational Mission, Free Press, set the framework for understanding global business. He wrote, with Gary Hamel: Competing for the Future, Harvard Business School Press, 1994 which was hailed as the best business book of the year. He coauthored (with Venkat Ramaswamy) The Future of Competition, Harvard Business School Press (2004). Business Week described it as a book "full of disruptive ideas". Business week and Strategy + Business voted it as one of the best business books of the year. His 2004 book, "The Fortune At The Bottom Of The Pyramid" Wharton Business Publishing, was voted the top business book of 2004 by The Economist, Fast Company and Amazon.com editors. As the book suggests, Dr. Prahalad points out that the corporate sector can help the poor – profitably. He coauthored (with M.S. Krishnan) The New Age of Innovation: Driving Cocreated Value through Global Networks, McGraw Hill (2008). He has won the McKinsey prize four times for the best article in Harvard Business Review. He received honorary doctorates in Economics (University of London) and Engineering (Stevens Institute of Technology), Business (Tilberg, The Netherlands and Abertay, Scotland). He was a member of the UN Blue Ribbon Commission on Private Sector and Development. He is active and prominent as a business consultant, and his clients include some of the world’s leading companies. He sits on the boards of NCR Corporation, Pearson, plc., Hindustan Unilever Limited, TVS Capital, The World Resources Institute (WRI) and The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE). Books   The New Age of Innovation: Driving Cocreated Value through Global Networks (2008) The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid (August 25, 2004) Competing for the future (Co-authored with Gary Hamel) The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value with Customers (2004 - co-authored with Venkat Ramaswamy) In search of excellence Multinational Mission: Balancing Local Demands and Global Vision (1987)

Harvard Business Review awarded the McKinsey Prize to him three times for the following articles:

"The End of Corporate Imperialism", co-authored with Kenneth Lieberthal (1998) "The Core Competence of the Corporation", co-authored with Gary Hamel (1990) "Strategic Intent", also co-authored with Gary Hamel (1989) "The New Frontier of Experience Innovation" published in Sloan Management Review won the SMR-PWC award for the best paper published in 2003 "Weak Signals vs. Strong Paradigms", published in the Journal of Marketing Research (1995) was awarded the 1997 ANBAR Electronic Citation of Excellence "The Dominant Logic: A New Linkage between Diversity and Performance" (1986), co-authored with Richard Bettis, was selected the Best Article published in the Strategic Management Journal for the period 1980-88 "The Role of Core Competencies in the Corporation" (1993) received the 1994 Maurice Holland Award as the Best Paper published in Research Technology Management in 1993 "A Strategy for Growth: The Role of Core Competence in the Corporation" won the European Foundation for Management Award in 1993

 

Erik Simanis Professor & Senior Research Associate, Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise at Cornell University's Johnson School of Management Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise Sage Hall, The Johnson School Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 ens25@cornell.edu

Erik Simanis is Senior Researcher at the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise at Cornell University’s Johnson School of Management. Erik co-founded with Professor Stuart Hart the Base of the Pyramid Learning Laboratory in 2000, a consortium of multinational corporations, non-governmental organizations, and multilaterals that explore market-based approaches to serving the four billion people at the base of the income pyramid. Erik currently co-directs the BoP Protocol Project, an initiative to develop an "embedded innovation" process that enables corporations to co-create new markets and businesses in deep partnership with low-income communities. As Co-Director, Erik has led successful BoP Protocol field implementations in Kenya in partnership with SC Johnson and in India with Dupont’s Solae subsidiary, and consults to recent project launches in Mexico and the United States.

Erik has taught undergraduate, masters, and executive level courses in strategy and sustainability. He holds a BA in Spanish from Wake Forest University and an MBA from the Kenan-Flagler School of Business, where he received the Norman Block Award for highest academic achievement. He is completing his PhD in business strategy at Cornell. Prior to academia, Erik's work experience included founding a tire-retreading start-up in Latvia during the post-Soviet transition, serving as a manager in an SME in the US wood products industry, and working in Monsanto Corporation’s Smallholder Farmer Team in the company’s former Sustainable Development Sector.

Representative Publications:

Simanis, E & Hart, S.L. 2009. "Beyond Selling to the Poor: Building Business Intimacy through Embedded Innovation." Sloan Management Review. (forthcoming).  

Simanis, E. N., S. L. Hart, et al. (2008). "The Base of the Pyramid Protocol: Beyond Basic Needs Business Strategies." Innovations 3(1): 57-84.

Simanis, E & Hart, S.L. (with DeKoszmovszky, Donohue, Duke, Enk, Gordon, and Thieme). 2008. "The Base of the Pyramid Protocol, 2^nd Edition." Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise. Cornell University.

Simanis, E. N. and S. L. Hart (2006). "Expanding Possibilities at the Base of the Pyramid." Innovations 1(1): 43-51.

Madhu Viswanathan Professor, Department of Business Administration College of Business, University of Illinois 61 Wohlers Hall 1206 South Sixth Street Champaign, IL, 61820 mviswana@illinois.edu

Madhu Viswanathan has been on the faculty at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, since 1990. His research programs are in two areas; measurement and research methodology, and literacy, poverty, and subsistence marketplace behaviors. He has authored books in both areas: Measurement Error and Research Design (Sage, 2005), and Enabling Consumer and Entrepreneurial Literacy in Subsistence Marketplaces (Springer, 2008, in alliance with UNESCO). His research program with a methodological orientation on measurement and research design paralleled many years of teaching research at all levels. It culminated in a book directed at the social sciences that provides a most detailed conceptual dissection of measurement error.

This work is a striking departure from the existing literature, which emphasizes a statistical orientation without sufficient elucidation of the conceptual meaning of measurement error. His research on subsistence marketplaces takes a micro-level approach to gain bottom-up understanding of life circumstances and buyer, seller, and marketplace behaviors. This perspective aims to enable subsistence marketplaces to move toward being ecologically, economically, and socially sustainable marketplaces. His research is synergized with innovative teaching and social initiatives. He teaches courses on research methods and on sustainable product and market development for subsistence. He directs the Subsistence Marketplaces Initiative (www.business.illinois.edu/subsistence).  His research is applied through the Marketplace Literacy Project (www.marketplaceliteracy.org), a non-profit organization that he founded and directs.

Representative Publications:

Viswanathan, Madhubalan, S. Gajendiran, and R. Venkatesan (2008), Enabling Consumer and
Entrepreneurial Literacy in Subsistence Marketplaces, Springer.

Chaturvedi, Avinish, C. Y. Chiu, and Madhubalan Viswanathan (2009), "Bounded Agency and Analytical Thinking among Low Literate Indian Women, " Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, forthcoming.

Viswanathan, Madhubalan, Ali Yassine, and John Clarke (2009), "Sustainable Product and Market Development for Subsistence Marketplaces: Creating Educational Initiatives in Radically Challenging Contexts," Journal of Product Innovation Management, forthcoming.

Viswanathan, Madhubalan, Srinivas Sridharan, Roland Gau, and Robin Ritchie (2009) "Designing Marketplace Literacy Education in Resource-Constrained Contexts: Implications for Public Policy and Marketing," Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, forthcoming.

Viswanathan, Madhubalan, Lan Xia, Carlos Torelli, and Roland Gau (2009), "Literacy and Consumer Memory," Journal of Consumer Psychology, forthcoming.

Rosa, Jose, and Madhubalan Viswanathan (2007), Product and Market Development for Subsistence Marketplaces: Consumption and Entrepreneurship Beyond Literacy and Resource Barriers, Advances in International Management Series, Joseph Cheng and Michael Hitt, Series Editors, Elsevier.

Viswanathan, Madhubalan, Jose Antonio Rosa, and James Harris (2005), "Decision-Making and Coping by Functionally Illiterate Consumers and Some Implications for Marketing Management," Journal of Marketing, 69(1), 15-31.

Patrick Whitney Dean and Steelcase/Robert C. Pew Professor of Design Illinois Institute of Technology 880 N. Lake Shore Drive, 9A Chicago, IL 60611 USA patrick.whitney@mac.com

Professor Whitney 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."

He has been on the jury of numerous award programs, including the U.S. Presidential Design Awards, was a member of the White House Council on Design, and was chairman of the program of the 1978 U.S. Conference of the International Council on Graphic Design Associations (ICOGRADA), which was the first major meeting addressing the issues of evaluating design from the perspective of users. Professor Whitney was the president of the American Center for Design (ACD) and the editor of Design Journal, its annual publication. He is on several advisory boards in the U.S. and abroad and is a trustee of the Global Heritage Fund.

He consults and conducts executive workshops for numerous corporations and organizations. These have included Aetna, BP, Lenovo, McDonald's, Procter & Gamble, Steelcase, Texas Instruments, Zebra Technologies, and departments of the governments of Denmark, Hong Kong, India, Japan, and the UK.

In addition to speaking at major design conferences throughout the world, Professor Whitney frequently speaks at conferences beyond the design field, such as China Daily's CEO Summit, the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit, the 50th anniversary of the Aspen Institute, and the TED conference. He is the principal investigator of several research projects at the Institute of Design, including Global Companies in Local Markets, Design for the Base of the Pyramid, and Schools in the Digital Age. His work has received support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and numerous others.

Representative Publications:

Daily Life, Not Markets: Customer-Centered Design, Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 28,
No. 4, 2007

China Needs Design That Sells, Business Week Online, April 25, 2006

Mind Reading Skills for Business, Business Week Online, October 6, 2005

The Innovation Gulf, Design & Business supplement for ID Magazine, June 2005

Design Revelations from Shanghai, Business Week Online, March 14, 2005

Designing for the Base of the Pyramid, with Anjali Kelkar, Design Management Journal,
Fall 2004

Global Companies in Local Markets, Product Design (Chinese journal) No. 4, March 15 2003