The Human Side of Innovation: The Power of People in Love with People

Mauro Porcini is PepsiCo’s first ever Chief Design Officer. He joined the food & beverage corporation in 2012 and in said role, he is infusing design thinking into PepsiCo’s culture and is leading a new approach to innovation by design that impacts the company’s product platforms and brands, which include Pepsi, Lay’s, Mountain Dew, Gatorade, Sodastream, Doritos, Lifewtr, Bubly, Aquafina, Cheetos, Quaker, 7Up, Mirinda, amongst many others. His focus extends from physical to virtual expressions of the brands, including product, packaging, events, advertising, fashion and art collaborations, retail activation, architecture, and digital media. He leads teams based in New York City, Purchase, Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, Orlando, Miami, London, Dublin, Moscow, Il Cairo, New Delhi, Shanghai, Bangkok, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, and Cape Town.

Mauro is the host of his own successful video podcast “In your shoes - with Mauro Porcini” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube, where he interviews inspiring personalities from the creative community worldwide. Since 2020, he has been a presenter and judge on the TV show “New York by Design” and “America by Design”, airing on CBS and Amazon Prime Video. In 2021 his first book was published, in Italian: “L’età dell’eccellenza – Come innovazione e creatività possono costruire un mondo migliore” (Il Saggiatore). His first book in English, “The Human Side of Innovation. The Power of People in Love with People” (Berrett-Koehler), focusing on innovation, design, and leadership, launched in October 2022.

Prior to joining PepsiCo, Mauro served as the first ever Chief Design Officer at 3M, where his mission was to build and nurture a design-sensitive culture in a technology-driven global corporation. His teams, based in the U.S., Italy, China, and Japan, won many of the world’s most prestigious design and innovation awards. Mauro began his professional career at Philips Design and then created his own design firm, Wisemad Srl, in Italy with the celebrated entertainment producer and music star Claudio Cecchetto. His work on wearable technologies has been showcased at the Louvre in Paris as well as the Seoul Art Center. Over the years he has been on the board of directors for several organizations. Currently, he is the President of the Politecnico of Milan Foundation in the United States (Fellows of Politecnico), sits on the board of directors of the Design Management Institute of Boston, and on the advisory council of other design, art, innovation, and business institutions.

Mauro is a fashion lover, but not a fashion addict – regardless of his collection of more than 300 pairs of shoes. He lives between New York City and the Hamptons with his wife Carlotta, with their daughter Beatrice, and with their two Pomeranians, Leone, and Bella.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

How Mauro grew up
The values instilled in him by his parents
The artistic and cultural impact of his childhood
The people who had the greatest influence on Mauro’s life journey
How dimensions of design and innovation fuse with humanity in Mauro’s book
What drives his work at PepsiCo
How Mauro refers to conflict as dialogue and the meaning it holds
The importance of both storytelling and culture
Which type of books most inspire Mauro

In this episode…

Mauro Porcini grew up in a town called Baris in Italy, about one hour from Milan, in a family obsessed with both culture and knowledge and the idea of kindness. This led him to study design in university with dreams of becoming a writer. Today, he has a wide-ranging career that involves both design and authorship.

Mauro worked in design in companies from Milan to Minnesota before eventually landing at PepsiCo to become their Chief Design Officer. The kinds of values important to him, imbued from childhood and his own expansive life journey, involve dreaming, innovating, being kind and resilient, all these themes that he explores in his book “The Human Side of Innovation”.

In this episode of What CEOs Talk About, host Martin Hunter and guest Mauro Porcini discuss Mauro’s celebrated career, his thoughts on design and innovation, the journey to always achieve something larger, choosing the right people for a company, and how love is a vital ingredient for success. The conversation reveals the depths of Mauro’s insight and passion: it’s both inspirational and aspirational.

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