DESIGN THINKING

AT
PEPSICO
Mauro Porcini is PepsiCo’s Chief Design Officer—the
first to hold the position—where he oversees design-
led innovation across all the company’s brands under
CEO Indra Nooyi. Below is an edited version of
conversation with Porcini on a variety of topics, from
prototyping to the essential qualities of a great design
organization.
For instance, if I say “knife,” you are going to visualize
a kind of knife. I’m going to visualize another knife,
and if there were other people in the room, they
would visualize many different kinds of knives.
Let’s say that in the room there is a marketer who
tells me the brand is not visible enough.
There is a scientist who tells me the blade is not
sharp enough.
They’re how prototyping surfaces issues that don’t
emerge in the abstract. That’s the power of design
and prototyping.
The first one is denial: the organization sees no need
for a new approach or new culture. But somebody
with influence and power inside the organization—
often it’s the CEO or somebody at executive level—
understands that actually there is a need, so they hire
a design leader who tries to introduce a new culture.
You need the right sponsorship from the top. The
new design function and the new culture need to be
protected by the CEO or by somebody at the
executive level. Because any entity, any organization,
tends to reject new culture.
Then comes the second phase: hidden rejection.
There may be acceptance at the top that the
organization needs to embrace a new approach, but
the full organization isn’t there yet. The design leader
is moving forward in alignment with leadership and
thinks that things are working well, but in reality they
are not. In this phase, it’s easy to fail, and it’s easy for
the company to reject the new approach.
The third phase is what I call the occasional leap
of faith. As the design leader, you find a co-
conspirator inside the organization who understands
the value of what you’re doing. He may or may not
understand deeply what design is about, but he
understands that there is value there and decides to
build something with you, to bet on you. That’s when
you start to get your quick wins. The quick wins are
so important because they exponentially build
understanding about the value of design.
The fourth one is what I like to call the quest for
confidence. This is when the company understands
that there is value in this new design culture and tries
to integrate it throughout the organization. The
problem is that when you try to do something
different, there is always inefficiency and risk. This is
especially true if you do design in innovation: There is
risk not just in a process but in the market, in the
brand and product you’re going to launch. That’s
when you need to build confidence in the
organization.
The last phase is what I like to call holistic
awareness, when everybody understands that the
new culture, in this case design, makes sense for the
organization. This is when design is not about
designers anymore. It becomes universal, and it
prompts everybody to modify their own approach to
work—whether it’s marketing, manufacturing, or any
other function—to embrace it.
But at the very base of innovation and
entrepreneurship is risk.
The more you prototype, the more you build
confidence in the organization, and the more you
know that what you’re doing is the right thing. This
quest for confidence is extremely important because
so many corporations today are paralyzed by their
fear of making mistakes or failing.
If design is really about deeply understanding people
and then strategizing around that, we need design
leaders with broad skills. Corporate executives often
don’t understand that there are different kinds of
design: There is brand design. There is industrial
design. There is interior design. There is UX and
experience design. And there is innovation in strategy.
So, you need a leader who can manage all the
different phases of design in a very smart way—
someone with a holistic vision.