New Gig For Marzano

Knowledge

The former chief design officer of Philips has found a new challenge at Electrolux - a company that says its plan for the future is to put design more at the heart of its operations.

By Gabrielle Kennedy /asdf 12-01-2012

Designer Stefano Marzano has found a new home at home-appliance maker Electrolux. Marzano had just retired as chief design officer at Philips of the Netherlands last November after heading the design department for twenty years. At Electrolux he will once again lead all the design related activities in the company.

The appointment is meant to “give design a core function in innovation together with R&D and Marketing,” Keith McLoughlin, President and CEO of Electrolux, said in a press release this week. “Electrolux has come very far in the transition from a manufacturing-driven company to a modern consumer insight-driven company.”

The company never had a “chief design officer” before.

“With Marzano as the new chief design officer, Electrolux now has in place the formal structure for its product development, referred to as its Innovation Triangle,” the company said. “The Innovation Triangle is about getting R&D, Marketing and Design functions in synergy during the entire creation process, with an even clearer focus on the customers and consumers.”

Stefano Marzano (Italy, 1950) has had a long career at Royal Philips Electronics, for the past 20 years as chief design officer. In 2005, Business Week named him one of the four global “Best Leaders for Innovation”, and in 2001 he was awarded the World Technology Award for Design by the World Technology Network.

Until 1998 he was a professor at the Domus Academy in Milan. He is also the author and editor of several books on design including Creating Value by Design: Thoughts and Facts (1998), Past Tense, Future Sense: Competing through Creativity – 80 Years of Design at Philips (2005), and (with Emile Aarts) The New Everyday: Views on Ambient Intelligence (2003).