Alen Faljic - Creating Business Confident Designers

Episode notes

Alen Faljic shares the gap he observed between design and business while at IDEO, what he’s doing to address it, and how quantitative data can lead to greater empathy. Highlights include: What does a business confident designer look like? Where does the disconnect between design and business come from? What do designers who have the most business impact do differently? What is the difference between being strategic and understanding strategy? How do designers and business people view the value of design differently? ===== Who is Alen Faljic? Alen is the Founder and CEO of d.MBA, a company he started in 2017 to help designers become business confident, which is part of d.MBA’s mission - to show that companies can be run more thoughtfully and also be financially successful. d.MBA seems to be making progress in that mission, with a 97% completion rate and a 9+ out of 10 student rating. That’s been achieved from over 600 designers, hailing from more than 60 countries, and who work at companies like Apple, Frog, Google, Logitech and Amazon.