Design.Continuity: How can inclusive design enable businesses to recover, transform and thrive in a post-pandemic and Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) world?

Innovation is the lifeblood of business continuity and central to the new UK Innovation Strategy: Leading the future by creating it. It calls on businesses to embed innovation-based thinking in their day-to-day operations and long-term planning as a means of re-establishing, transforming and leading a robust, agile and thriving economy. What role can design play in enabling companies to successfully seize the opportunities of an innovation economy and create new ones? This event brings together thought leaders from across design, technology and economics, to explore the scope for design-led, people-first and inclusive approaches to business recovery, creation and prosperity in a pandemic impacted world. 

Chair

Dr Ninela Ivanova
Innovation Fellow, Inclusive Design for Business Impact 

Ninela is an interdisciplinary designer and researcher, who specialises in working with new and emerging technologies to develop practical applications for design, enterprise, innovation and education. Ninela heads the Inclusive Design for Business Impact area at The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, looking at how the methods, tools and processes of Inclusive Design, Design Thinking and Creative Leadership can directly impact and transform business and industry. 

Speakers

Carole Bilson
President, Design Management Institute (DMI)

Carole was appointed president of DMI in November 2014. In this role she has introduced a number of new initiatives such as: dmi:Design Value Awards, dmi:Student Essay Competition, dmi:Diversity in Design Manifesto, Conference, and magazine issue dedicated to Diversity. Prior to this position, Carole was president of Strategic Change & Innovation, an organization whose mission was to provide strategic and operational guidance to managers and executives wishing to create organizational change, utilizing design thinking and innovation. Prior to this she was the Vice President, Global Design & Usability & Technology Support Operations at Pitney Bowes. Carole oversaw these award-winning departments, at Pitney Bowes for 11 years, delivering leading edge, global design solutions for mail and document management solutions. Her organization consisted of visual and industrial designers, information architects/ human factors engineers, front-end software developers, regulatory & safety compliance engineers and the engineering prototyping ctr. Under Carole’s leadership, the department received 12 international Design Awards and was awarded 49 patents, and helped the company win a $21 million dollar bid from the US Federal Government. She spearheaded and developed an innovation project for the division that resulted in a product launch for Apple App Store. 

Dr Gerard Briscoe
Design Age Institute Research Fellow 

Gerard is a design researcher in Technology Futures, focusing on interdisciplinary design-computing research in designing digital cultures for preferable futures. Gerard's research focuses on exploring technology futures in establishing innovation ecosystems for the longevity economy. This involves exploring inclusive design for equity in emerging technologies for all abilities, which requires understanding themes in digital materiality, resistance to digitisation and cyborg post-humanism. He developed his expertise in interdisciplinary design research from over a decade’s experience with inter- and multi-disciplinary research. He gained his B/MEng in Computing, and PhD in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, from Imperial College London. 

Oluchi Ikechi-D'Amico
Partner at Ernst & Young Parthenon, Head of Strategy & Transactions APAC,

Oluchi has led 15+ wide scale complex merger/acquisition programs. She previously built and led Accenture’s business restructuring unit in the UK for Capital Markets. An avid advocate and advisor around innovation, having built products from scratch to help clients, as well as sponsored Accenture’s FinTech accelerator programmes and ‘innovation challenge’ initiatives across Capital Markets UK. A vocal advocate, ambassador, blogger, regular panellist and multiple business award winner for next-generation leadership with a focus on innovation, diversity and inclusive leadership. Notably featuring as Management Today’s 35 Women under 35 2019. Board member for Business in the Community (BITC) London, focused on inclusive entrepreneurship. Founder of ‘Fully Bossed’, helping to advance careers using soft skills. Stanford Graduate Business School in progress.