Transcript

Rapid Response: Why design matters more than ever, w/PepsiCo Chief Design Officer Mauro Porcini

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You need to build in a house the culture of innovation. You need people in love with people obsessed with extreme quality, with excellence. Designer can help ignite the culture, but the culture needs to be spread across every single function of the company. It may be daunting for you as a leader, but it's about mindset. We should spend our life. growing, embedding ourselves and seeing every single opportunity, every encounter as an opportunity to learn.

You realize The what you know. Is very Little is almost nothing, it's dust in the universe. And this is the beauty of the real innovators and is the excellence you want to deliver to people that can create a better world and a better society.

That's Moro Porcini, the chief design officer at PepsiCo and author of the new book The Human Side of Innovation. Design has been a key component of business success for iconic companies from Apple to Airbnb to Nike. I'm Bob Safian. Former editor of Fast Company, founder of the Flux Group, and host of Masters of Scale Rapid Response. I wanted to talk to Moro because he's uncommonly clear and engagingly passionate about how any business and business person can benefit from a designer's mindset. As an executive inside large enterprises like Pepsi and 3M, Moro has deployed creativity as a force for positive disruption.

And he has specific systematic tips on what it takes to spark and maintain innovation inside organizations as they scale. Design's not just about style or looking good, Morrow says, though he's an advocate for both. Разign і забав ім'я. For fellow employees and for customers to describe what drives a truly innovative culture. It might sound soft.

But as Moro's perspective unfolds, you understand the brass tax business gains that can flow from kindness. Optimism and empathy. I'm Bob Safi. I'm here with Marl Percini, chief design officer at PepsiCo and author of the new book. The human side of innovation

Maura, thanks for joining us. Well, thanks for having me, Bob. It's such a pleasure to be here with you today. Yeah, you and I first met I don't wanna know how many years ago I was back at Fast Company. I think you were at three M, maybe? А восей да ю а ось

The most stylish person in any room that I've been in with you. The clothes, the shoes, the beard, everything. For those of you listening, Mara is wearing a Delicious Black suit and a black shirt. What are the shoes today? Boots?

Purple. It's um touch of craziness in a very elegant and serious kind of outfit. Because tonight I have an event that is kind of serious, so I try to to match the tone of the event. Well, I couldn't carry it off. Do you like people to look at you? Is that what it is?

I love to express my self. Clothing is a three hundred and sixty approach to communication and somebody could see in that personal branding. If I am in front of an executive team, a board of a company, and I'm asking for a lot of money That day I will dress up with a jacket, kind of serious. There will be always that touch of craziness, though. Could be the shoe, it could be The watch.

to remind them I am the creative person that you hire and that you want to disrupt things and everything. But you can trust me as well. outfits are so powerful they're part of the implicit communication It is ongoing twenty four seven. The reality is that we are communicating while we talk with The visual code, your outfit, your body language, the way you

Move. It's part of the communication it's so important. And you want to have a touch of craziness in that visual communication. You just wanna let them know that like you never quite know what Moro's gonna do next. These companies expect these people to have an unexpected point of view to bring creativity to the room. But the problem of our community.

is sometimes We canna channel the creativity а де сервисів бізнес у де бізнес і цел. doesn't feel comfortable with that kind of creativity. We should always be there balancing the two elements. The creativity is something that is unexpected, but with other elements that can be at the service of the business, of the growth of the company, of the financial goals that we have. A lot of folks confuse Design with style.

Particularly business people, sometimes it's like, Oh, it's just aesthetics, it's color, it's Fabrics, its shapes. What is the definition of design? designers today in companies big and small are the ambassadors of the human being

Of the people out there within these organizations. They essentially represents the needs and the wants of the people, of the customers. And they're able to translate those needs and wants into solutions that are fulfilling the needs and the desires of these people. While in the past, to have design in your company in many industries Was

And nice to have. But was not necessary. Many companies didn't want to have designers in house to remind the company all the time that the product was not extraordinary. With that non perfect product, we're making tons of money. So we don't want you to tell us and so you will keep the designers out. This was happening in so many industries. You need to build in house the culture of innovation. You need people in love with people, as I like to define them, people that are obsessed with extreme. quality, with excellence, with creating meaningful solutions for the people out there. Designers are training this, but this is not just the design and designers kind of.

issue and opportunity. The entire company need to have that kind of culture. Designer can help eventually ignite the culture, but the culture needs to be spread across every single function of the company. Yeah, you say in the book that we're entering an age of excellence, which sounds promising. But also kind of Daunting. Like we need to be consistently excellent

Or were vulnerable. І воз ізі ту протеор порфольо індепас. No matter the quality, the people out there were forced to buy whatever finding Today is a complete different situation.

Anybody out there can access in a much easier way. funding. And therefore, I may have a product that is really good, a brand that is great, a service that is phenomenal, but maybe my product is not sustainable enough or is not healthy enough. And this is where competition will come in. So is enough one area of weakness. That

Competitor, kur kamin. In ways that were not possible. Now, it may be daunting for you as a leader As a person, as entrepreneur, as an individual inside an organization, thinking oh my God, I need to produce Excellence, but this about mindset.

The message is that we should Spend our life Growing, embedding ourselves and seeing every single opportunity, every encounter, every podcast, every project, every experience as an opportunity to learn. At a certain point you realize The what you know.

Is very Lead on. Is almost nothing, it's just in the universe. Sócrates told us already thousands of years ago, you know, the wise man or woman is the person that knows of not knowing. And this is the beauty of the real innovators, the real leaders. They are in love with the people they serve, the consumer, the customer, and the love somehow synthetized. Is the excellence of what you are trying to create for them. And it's the excellence you want to deliver to people that can create a better world and a better society. You say we need to nurture three talents, entrepreneurial spirit.

Empathy. And enabling others to succeed. And that sounds Kinda simple. What makes it hard.

The ability To dream. To think big, to have a vision. We think big when we are children. But then with time we forget. The ability to dream.

They start to tell you that dreaming is a childish kind of activities dreaming is not okay because society wants to normalize us. The norm the dictatorship of the norm is so important to stabiliz the world we live in. We don't want Many dreamers. Another italian poet, his name is Giacomo Pascoli, more than a century ago, used to talk about the fanciulino, this little child that is inside ourselves, and then we lose over the years when we grow up. So it's important that we protect the child, but then you need to combine that with. Yeah.

ability to execute as well. One of the most complicated skill is that ability to balance the two dimension, dreaming and then making things happen. There are other characteristics that you stress in the book. Kindness. Curiosity

It's so important to be open to what's going on out there. Curious people love diversity by definition because they see diversity The precious gift of knowledge. They know that people that are different than them will add something to them. They don't go from one meeting room to the other meeting room in a business strip. They get lost in the city. They bump into people and they observe the way they are dressed, the way they talk, the way they communicate. Optimism. Another characteristic.

is so damn important. If you are innovating, by definition, you're changing the status quo. And when you change the status quo, you will get rejection. People will push back. If we don't face any rejection, let's worry. It means that we're not really changing Anything. And when we face that kind of rejection. is important to

Keep the kind of positive mindset. I met so many people over the years, even in my own teams, that were great designers and great innovators. But they were pessimistic. And if you're pessimistic is so Tough. To push against all those roadblocks all the day. And what about kindness?

Often people are like, Oh my God, why kindness in business? Peaching the idea of kindness and using that as a filter in the creation of my teams in Triam in PepsiCo for more than 20 years. And so what happened when you are surrounded by nice people? You're gonna spend more time with the people surrounding you. You may spend personal time together. That quality time.

Build a bond e synergie that become so important when in the future. You face Problems and difficulties. Could be a business problem or it could be a personal problem. Two tausin sixteen for instance I had really serious personal problems and I was a ghost you know I was gone My leadership team was there and they all

got together and united, they filled the gap that I was living in those months of personal weakness. Now multiply that kind of situation for three hundred thousand people, that is the number of people, for instance, we have in a company like PepsiCo. And you understand the level of produttivity. or lack of productivity that you may have, depending if you have kind trustworthy people.

Or people that are not. How many times do you hear Companies to talk about productivity and kindness together and kindness as a driver of productivity. And the reality is that it's an amazing, amazing driver of productivity.

Andrew New was the CEO of Pepsi who hired you and brought you on. And as I recall in those early days, Pepsky didn't really understand design or why it mattered, or kind of Why if she had brought you in? This is something that I discussed with Indra Nui during the interview process.

Е найти із декі різон. Why she hire me? When I ray toffee s in purchase she had dossier. Pretty high. About me and everything I did and all my projects. So very quickly the conversation moved from my projects and achievements from a design standpoint.

Two how to design culture. And how to change the culture and evolve a culture. And I share with her five phases that I I went through. in triam

in that effort to change the culture of the organization and infuse human centricity and design driven innovation inside that company. Can you give us an example of one of those phases? The first phase is what I call The denial phase is when a company doesn't understand that it needs a different approach to something.

If you stay in denial phase, it's gonna happen what happened to the Kardak and the blockbuster of the world. You need somebody de top to drive the change, to sponsor the change, to make the change start. In the case of 3M, they hired this young kid out of Italy to start infusing design in the company. And back then, obviously, it was a very safe bet. I was 27, they asked me to start in Europe, it was the consumer business. If it was not working, whatever. And I remember taking my suitcase and traveling to Minnesota from Italy. I was still based in Italy, and pitching this idea of design. To the stack company in the middle of the Midwest. And I remember the first meeting to the RD leaders and with the marketing leaders and

And they loved it. I was so excited, I was like, yes, they get it, it's gonna be easy. I was twenty-seven, full of enthusiasm. And I remember going to the office of the executive sponsor of this initiative, his name is Monosari, he was the EVP of the consumer business of the company, one of the most powerful person. inside that organization back then. And I go to Mo and I tell him Look more. It's amazing. Our design vision is appreciated by everybody. So he was there on the other side of this big desk. He looks at me and is like with a serious face.

He says. They're all lying to you. I make. Mo, no, no, no, no. You were not in the room. I tell you, they are not lying to me. There was enthusiasm. And I was like, I was thinking, I didn't tell him. I have this IEQ and the emotional intelligence. I can really feel people and I was sure that they were with me. And Mo looks at me again and the serious again he repeats. I'm telling you that they are all

Line to you. He told me, look, imagine you are in a gallery. Well Mauro, you and design, you're one of the paintings. And the people are not buying you. They're buying all other paintings. I know because I gave them that money, and I know what paintings they're buying. They're buying the latest HR initiative or the new plant in Florida or whatever. They're not investing design.

That changed my life. That really helped me understand a major blind spot that I have, and after that. I developed the technique to understand who was with me and who was not with me. So the technique I developed is very simple. Every time I pitch something, I ask people Sorto sacrifajse commiment. Most of the time I ask them money, give me the money, you know, invest in people in resources to run the projects.

My ask them question, why you don't wanna do it now? And if people commit, then you can build on that. There are the early adopters just One person out of ten in society out there. Is willing.

To try something new. All the others are gonna wait for others to try this first. The same applies to culture. In this face, you need to identify what I call the ko konspirators. When I arrive at Pepsi, I map the co conspirators in the company. There were the low hanging fruit, those projects where I could really showcase the value of design very quickly. I started to work with what I call the proof points. Show the value of your initiative as soon as possible.

Even if it's not ideal, even if it's not perfect, show progress. So speed in this case is very important. I call this the occasional leap of faith. Occasionally because there are few co-conspirators that you bump into and you can start projects with. So you need to find the co-conspirators and you need to be proof points. When you start to have a few proof points, more people will come to you and they will be like, Can I try? you know, I want to do the same that you did in Pepsi in Montaigneux. I want the same, you know, and you tell them. Absolutely. Give me the money. A few will give you the money, a few won't.

The more projects you start to have, the more critical mass you start to have the more the company will start to understand that actually That thing called design or that thing called new culture, whatever you're doing Make sense. This is a very critical moment. Because

You're moving from a pioneering kind of initiative Two Something they require. Risk?

And huge investments. And this is the moment where everybody in the company is like, Yeah, that thing called design is so cool. I want to have it in my business as well. So you've been through The denial phase and rejection and made that leap of faith. But you're not done because you need The quest for confidence.

You need to build emotional confidence in the organization that what you're doing is the right thing to do. In the case of design, it's so indispensable to have designers in house, because they need to work hand in hand with marketing, R D, all the other functions to drive that scale. If you succeed, you move to the fifth phase, what I call yolistic awareness, is when the company really gets it. It's a phase that I wish to no company and no team and no leader to arrive to. Because as soon as you start to get close to the holistic awarness The real innovator should already think about what else you can do. Wanna keep pushing and pushing because perfection doesn't exist.

You want to see your company out. up there, you know, in the world of ideas, and you you have that dream and you wanna push towards the dream all the time, moving the goal further and further. To better yourself in the journey. When you build substantial wealth through your business, it's often tied up in a single equity position. The upside is real, but so is the risk, and knowing when to act isn't always obvious.

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Those are great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't. How do we build a future? That is human centered. I'm Rana El Khalyubi. And on my podcast, Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone.

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Before the break, we heard PepsiCo chief design officer Moro Porcini talk about the impact of creativity on business and his five phases for building an innovation culture. Now he talks about what businesses underestimate about design and why some things labeled as quote failures aren't actually failures at all. Plus he offers key lessons about linking purpose and profit, unpacking his mantra that innovation is an act of love. When you became chief design officer first at three M and then at PepsiCo I sort of anticipated like there were gonna be a wave of chief design officers that were everywhere.

And yet in some ways it feels like in the last few years Design in that way. I don't wanna say it's faded, but it's not Getting the same overt buzz in some ways that it did. Ам куриус whether You feel any of that, whether that's because some of these ideas have been integrated into other parts of businesses?

Or whether like People are just missing. They're just making a mistake. In not embracing it more. Look. I think

We're still in a journey There are companies that are implementing design thinking without even realizing that this is design thinking this culture before anything else. One of the Issues that we need to figure out in the coming months and years is what is the role of the designers.

in this new design thinking kind of culture or creative kind of culture. This is something that I face myself. We designers talk about innovation as The focus on the needs and wants of people and society and the creation of extraordinary products or solutions. The companies talking about innovation

They talk about the financial revenue of innovation. Let's be clear. I'm not saying designers should Understand. the business dimension of the equation.

We need to understand what kind of role we wanna play. Because some designers started to fail playing that kind of role. A variety of different companies started to step back. And give that kind of responsibility back to the business world.

The more designers we show that actually you can drive that kind of value. the more I think companies will start to invest again in design positions. Look. As many people can imagine, I receive calls from recruiters all the time. for chief design officer positions in industries that you

never think of from insurances to banks So it is happening. It's still there. Із часто и де сіос а такі лес ободи. because it's not that trendy of a topic. It's just more normal now, more infused inside the culture of many organizations. But there is so much more that these companies can do with design.

There's the creation of value and there's the extraction of value. And sometimes those are two different functions, and you have to decide where you want to live. Right? Your Former magazine, Fast Company. recently published an article about design thinking somehow failing in the world. And they were mentioning also PepsiGo, some of our

Products and I was like wow. They're really not understanding the value we're generating this company and to reduce everything to the next I watch is not really understanding what we're talking about. For instance

We launched a few years ago, Dreamfinity. Reasonable bottle That you feel with Tap water essentially, if you want. And then you have a pod and you can add functional and ingredients or you know, flavors and things like this.

Now That effort was something we're doing. to push society де вод To move away from plastic, use reusable Plastic in that case.

He was not received as we were hoping, not expecting. Let's be careful. Hoping. But We generated so much inside that we use then in a very similar product that is super successful for us today, that is in market, that is Gatorade GX. Same technology, reusable bodo. Pods.

Then you have a wearable device that you put on your skin that monitor your sweating, the composition and amount of sweating, and suggest you the specific kind of concentrate of gator that you wanna use. It's exactly the same thing. We need to understand the big picture. And To change companies of this size.

Takes time and is often is incremental. We need to be very careful when we attack design thinking in general. when it's not that visible is not producing the next iPhone. Because It can change companies from within and move them. Toward the right direction, step by step.

one product at a time is in the nature of design thinking to put products out there that are gonna fail. Prototyping is not just the prototype you do in a laboratory behind the scenes. The companies that really get it. They put those products out there. They prototype ideas, business models. When they fail.

We shouldn't look at them as failures. This is the wrong mindset. We should call them experiments within the companies and the world out there should understand that that's part of. the change that innovators go through to arrive to something bigger І значас прода дривен із кольчу і The way you communicate, is the way you build the brands, is the way you modify your portfolio over time. I wanted to ask about design and sustainability,'cause there's been some

rethinking some parts of the design community about How creating demand for things and driving consumption might not be the most responsible thing to do for the planet. How do you square the ethics and the realities of

Climate change with the business imperatives of driving growth at a company that is as big as Pepsico is. We're ambassadors of the human being. Since I joined this company, we started a series of projects in a proactive way. They were all centered around the idea of sustainability. Those were proactive projects. The

soda stream professional the gator gx the drink finity ear many others de will take shape in the future i think we need to Deal with the system understand the system we're in and try to change it from within. They drive me crazy, you know, the people that from outside of the system they just complain about what's going on. Because I wish it was possible, and if somebody can make it happen, wow.

Great. But if we don't Then we need Armies. of people that think in the way that Have purpose and sustainability and a better world and a better planet in their mind to join these companies to help these companies moving from within. We bought for X billion dollars so the stream and we're

Pushing it as much as possible. We build so that's in professional that is all about customization of your drinks, with reusable bottles, very focused on health and wellness. So we have these solutions, but we need people to buy them. And so everybody has a role in this. The big companies, if those solutions are embraced, have the power to scale them up. to the next level. But people need to love them and buy them. You say in the book that incremental risk

is no longer enough. And it sounds like some of that is about The business reality and some of that is about The challenges that we face in the world. Just not to be misunderstood.

юнід інкрементар іновешн інкремента риск інор мікс But if you just rely on that. It's complicated. So the break through changes and innovations. Are a way to shake the system. It's really a matter of looking at your financial algorithm, looking at your business portfolio, looking at the culture of your talents, and balancing everything to blend.

Incremental evolution with some breakthrough events that can accelerate everything else. And this is true, once again, in what Indra d me or other. Talents that she brought in from outside. You bring in disruptive talents, you try to insert them in the genetic code of the organization. And they change the organization from within. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but companies need to keep trying that because even The fact that you're trying is building by itself a culture. Even when you

Fail. But once again, we shouldn't look at those failure as failures, but as experiments you learn from. What's at stake for Design now for all of us at businesses now. We're facing so many difficulties from a potential recession, wars, division in society, and

The role of technology, data, artificial intelligence that is creating anxiety in people, thinking okay, what is the future of us? of individuals. This book is sending a message of optimize. That you can win just if you create excellence for society. We talk so much about sustainability, we talk so much about health and wellness. This is a very tangible example of how the world is moving in the right direction. At the end of the day, what really makes the difference is

The person is the human being, and is in this perfect loop. people in love with people is the person driving innovation and is the focus on the person you wanna serve. Think about the first Acts of innovation. The first act of design was when the prehistor man or woman took a stone and started to. Change it to manipulate it to

Transform something that was available in nature in a tool. To hunt to cook. later on to decorate your body, later on to Celebrate your gods.

So есенче старти ту кріє став. products as we call them today for themselves and the people surrounding them. As an act of love. I start the book with this sentence, Innovation is an act of love. Originally, it was exactly that. You were creating something. To fulfill a need of you

And the people around you, this is what was driving Innovation. It was an act of love. And then When you started to have too many objects and products to produce, these people started to delegate the actual love to others and scale.

Is what killed that act of love. Because all of a sudden you started to put a distance between The person That was creating and the person that you are serving. So you you lost that intimacy, that looking at the person in front of you and being like, you know what, I really want to create the perfect shoe for you or the perfect drink for you, because I really care about you. You are my children, you are my husband or wife, or parents, or friends. We scale. Came a new focus, the focus on profit. Focus on economic growth. And so for years we've been slave of that, and we started to lose love in favor of economic interest.

While in the past you could protect through barriers to entry driven by scale. Today Technologies and globalizations are making those barriers to entry crumbling down, and you need therefore to Рігнайте лов.

into your culture, into your company, into everything you do. Із біками якій компети а втадж тудей. is the only driver of real sustainable profitability in time if you do it. Right. I think that we are at a crossroad that these company are starting to

really be driven by purpose for real, simply because they understand that the business is there, you know the future is there. But this is magic. This is beautiful. And we can accelerate it more and more. Well, Maro, thank you for bringing your dreams and your Optimism. And your love to all of us into this.

I really appreciate you. Spending time with us. Thank you so much. Thank you, Bob. It's been A pleasure. Masters of Scale Rapid Response is a Wait What original.

It's hosted by me, Bob Safian, Masters of Scales editor at large. Masters of Scale host is Reed Hoffman. Our executive producers are June Cohen, Darren Triff, and Jordan McCloud. Arhead of content and production is Lori Hoffman. Our producer is Marie McCoy Thompson.

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