Interesting discussion. Historically the path to the executive suite has lain through functions closely tied to revenue. For a while it was sales or marketing. There was a fashion for coming up through finance. Back in the day it was often through ops or production. But in every case the route up the management ladder was easier the closer to the revenue stream or corportate financial performance was one's role.
The most similar recent precedent I can think of is the rise of the CTO. Has anyone heard if CTOs are being called up to the Chief Exectutive level? And how many CTOs have come up through network ops or apps dev rather than from IT-consuming functions? The CTO role came about at least in part because technology proved itself over a generation as a profitability driver. Lots of data were generated and collected through various process and productivity improvements and cost savings initiatives to make technology's impact visible. But given the number of articles in recent years about how IT has to learn to tie its work more closely to a companies business strategy, I'd guess that CTO influence might have been quite limited until recently. I should think that designers getting to the C-level will depend on their demonstrating revenue impact, whereas in many companies it's still seen as a cost impact. Of course, in companies whose primary product is software then design and development folks are on the production path and therefore much more likely to reach the top level - because they are production leaders, not directly because they might be design leaders. It really comes down to quantifying rather than merely asserting design's contribution to corporate financial performance. As always looking forward to others' throughts. Faith -- Faith Peterson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Skype: faithpeterson http://www.linkedin.com/in/fpeterson IxDA | IAInstitute | IIBA | CSM On 10/7/07, Mark Schraad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: ....The CEO of the future can be the chief experience officer. At least how it plays out in my scenario planning..... Mark On Oct 7, 2007, at 9:48 PM, Christopher Fahey wrote: > I don't understand why those of us who design things keep praising > "d-schools" and "design thinking"..... It seems to me that the purpose of a D- > School is to rob us designers of a career path and to allow MBAs to > manage us instead of allowing us to pull ourselves up into > corporate management. .... > > Christopher Fahey > > ____________________________ > > Behavior > > biz: http://www.behaviordesign.com > > me: http://www.graphpaper.com ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://gamma.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://gamma.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://gamma.ixda.org/help
