Rico Chan is a Hong Kong-based social designer; who explores the relationships between people, technology and our visual environment. He believes that arts, culture and our living environments inspire us, bring us together, and teach us about who we are, despite differences in age, gender, race or physical abilities – in short, that arts and culture are for all.
Rico is the founder and CEO of Beyond Vision Projects (BVP), a newly founded social enterprise that enhances quality of life for the visually impaired, the elderly with low vision and people with learning difficulties by focusing on social inclusiveness, accessibility and employment opportunities.
Rico has organised and engaged in multiple exhibitions; advocating social inclusion and equal accessibility through the Tactile-Audio Interaction System (TAIS) which enable the visually impaired to experience rich visual environments. Currently he is working on a joined exhibition with Another Way of Seeing in Seoul; Korea, and a tactile-audio installation project for the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, which will be launched in early 2019.
Fenne Roefs is the Creative Director at Mijksenaar Wayfinding Experts, a design agency specialising in consultancy and the creation of information systems. The designs and advice they give to clients help people finding their way in public and semi-public environments.
Fenne’s background is in cognitive psychology, graphic design and project management, which prove to be the perfect combination for her work at Mijksenaar.
Fenne has been with Mijksenaar since 10 years ago, working on many different kinds of both small and large projects. Every project teaches her something new about wayfinding, teamwork and management, adding to her knowledge, experience and expertise. In addition, Fenne regularly gives lectures and workshops to students as well as professionals.
Sean Donahue is internationally recognised for his socially-driven design and design research. He is the Co-founder and Core Faculty of Art Center College of Design’s ground breaking Graduate Media Design Practices+Field program, and Principal of RCD/LA, his award-winning California-based design practice. Sean’s works focus on 21st century global challenges in local contexts, engaging marginalised communities through design in some of the most exciting and complicated parts of the world. From East Africa to East Los Angeles, Sean leads efforts to impact on the realities of peoples’ lives in positive ways through ground-breaking design. Sean’s works have been included in the Cooper Hewitt National Design Triennial, the California Design Biennial, the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institute and recently in Design as Future-Making published by Bloomsbury Press.
Patrick Blanc was born in 1953 in Paris and became Docteur d’Etat ès Sciences, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris 6 in 1989. Patrick is a botanist and an artist. Patrick created a soilless system allowing the realisation of vegetal walls. This was patented in 1988.
After the first public vertical garden created in Paris in 1986, Patrick created about 300 vertical gardens all over the world, indoor and outdoor, under various climates, from Riyadh to New York. Patrick worked with world-famous architects including Jean Nouvel, Kazuyo Sejima, Herzog and de Meuron, Tadao Ando etc.
Patrick received many awards including the Botany award, French Academy of Sciences in 1993. Patrick’s vertical garden was listed as ‘One of 50 Best Inventions of the Year’ by Time Magazine in 2009.
Patrick created the world’s tallest plant installation of climbers: Le Nouvel in Kuala Lumpur with Architect Jean Nouvel in 2015.
Patrick’s book The Vertical Garden, from Nature to the City, Norton Press, 2008 and 2012 for the second edition, is a major publication in the world regarding the vertical garden.
Patrick is a world famous botanist and discovered a new species of begonia which was named after him as Begonia blancii. Patrick was also the scientific director of the ‘Canopy Raft’ expeditions in French Guyana (1986 and 1989) and in Cameroon (1989).
Philip De Wulf is a licensed psychologist from the University of Ghent (Belgium) with a track record of more than 20 years in consulting blue chip companies such as Vodafone, FrieslandCampina, Sara Lee, Heineken, P&G, Coca Cola , Port of Antwerp and many more on global marketing and innovation strategy. He is also a Lecturer and Guest Lecturer at the University of Antwerp, Ghent, Maastricht and Illinois. His core belief is ‘design is the key to do good, do well and do better’.
Before joining Yellow Window he spent 2 years as a change agent in the top 40 senior leadership team of Almarai, the world’s biggest vertically integrated food company and nr 33 on the Forbes Global Most Innovative Companies list. As Strategy Partner in Yellow Window he supports clients and designers in product and service design by enhancing their organsation’s dynamic capabilities of sensing (needs), shaping (portfolios) and seising (opportunities).
Working at the intersection of technology, business and design, Ryan’s creative leadership focuses on helping clients and design teams to see business as a creative medium to achieve positive impact for users and inspiring them with the latest possibilities in business and technology.
An engineer by training and a business designer by practice, Ryan has applied his problem-solving tools and design thinking mindset across industries like Finance, Energy, Consumer Goods & Services and Healthcare. From the largest Fortune 500 organisations to nascent start-ups, Ryan has led and guided teams around the world on how to be more human-centered, creatively explore and solve problems, and quickly prototype ideas for users to vote with their wallets.
Per Kristiansen has been the Partner of Trivium since 2006.
He spent a number of years working in the LEGO Group, first as change agent in the Pre-School area. He then joined the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® activities, initially Executive Discovery, the start-up that developed and managed the method and later in the LEGO Company. Initially Per’s role was two pronged: 1) Master Trainer and 2) Responsible for Europe and the Middle East. When Executive Discovery was closed down and LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® became part of LEGO, Per took on the role as Global Manager of LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®.
Per has master degree in intercultural business, and has spent his career helping companies accelerate change and innovation, and in developing robust strategies. He has been based in Italy, Scandinavia and in the UK. He now lives in Copenhagen with his partner Christina and their two sons.
Rama Gheerawo is an international figure within design, business and innovation and a serial innovator in the fields of technology, products, services and transport with over 100 projects to his name. He works with government, industry and the public sector with a client list that included Samsung, Toyota, P&G, Panasonic, Sony, the NHS and the UK and Hong Kong governments – training around 400 civil servants for the latter on creativity and leadership. He is co-leading a redesign of the London taxi, one of the most significant projects on the globe and has delivered ground-breaking work across a variety of sectors from artificial intelligence to aging and healthcare. Rama has published widely and run highly acclaimed innovation workshops across the globe. He is a Visiting Professor at the Royal Danish Academy of the Arts and was awarded Fellowships at the Royal College of Art and Royal Society for the Arts.
Tim Stock is the Co-founder of scenarioDNA, a consultancy that leverages the union of consumer anthropology and data science to advise global clients on cultural trends with a systems-thinking approach to innovation. He is the co-inventor of a patented methodology of Culture Mapping that analyses patterns in culture using computational linguistics and machine learning to visualise trend narratives and forecasts. Clients include Campbell’s, IKEA, Nike, Hilton Worldwide and Honda. Tim is a frequent speaker on culture and innovation and has appeared in various publications such as The New York Times, The Financial Times, Advertising Age and Quartz.
Maxime Szyf has been a designer since his childhood. After product development studies in Antwerp, he worked at Samsonite Europe (Oudenaarde) and Verhaert (industrial design in Antwerp) before starting his own office in 1998. As a Creative Partner at Yellow Window design, he works on products and services in various categories with DESIGN THINKING as core expertise and where the user is central. He combines observation and co-creation, analysis and creativity to guarantee sustainable and measurable ROI (return-on-innovation) for the challenges of a changing world.
