Hong Kong Design Centre

Many of the world’s successful brands like Apple, Nike and Airbnb share the same secret to success — the expanding role of design in their corporate cultures. Much more than just beautiful products or viral marketing campaigns, design thinking actually exerts power in these corporates on a decision-making level. Their astounding success stories have inspired more and more businesses to look for abilities like design thinking in executives and managers. So whether you are a designer or not, exuding a certain creative confidence is a good way to impress others in the conference room, in both private and public sectors alike.

Of course, it is as much about creating value for your company as standing out from the crowd. To this end, Hong Kong Design Centre created the Institute of Design Knowledge (IDK), a unique learning platform in Hong Kong providing the advanced design knowledge that today’s industry leaders and executives need to sustain the innovative approach in their disciplines. Its bespoke training workshops on design and innovation, design thinking and creative leadership touch on a wide range of design disciplines and management issues. To date, IDK has rolled out thirty-five modules for strategic users of design, design management and design practitioners to choose from.

For this year’s Knowledge of Design Week (KODW), IDK has lined up nine workshops to add an experiential learning element to the event. They cover a host of hot design topics concerning “Design and Liveability” in a variety of industries, from urban planning, branding to healthcare. Acclaimed designers, urban design gurus, creativity trainers, design-savvy strategists, etc. will facilitate half-to-one-day workshops, where they will share proven methodologies and experiences from Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.

French botanical artist Patrick Blanc, with his three-decade-long career in creating vertical gardens, will enlighten us in the “Masterclass on Vertical Garden Design.” Ever since he invented and patented the soilless vegetal wall system in the eighties, Patrick has created around three hundred “living walls” in different corners of the earth, working alongside famous architects like Jean Nouvel and Taodo Ando. His innovative and artistic works provide visually and ecologically ingenious solutions to tackle urban deprivation for nature and improve well-being in overcrowded vertical cities.

The mantra “good design is good business” by Thomas Watson Jr, IBM’s legendary president, is equally true to our time when read the other way round. “Good business is good design” is certainly what IDEO, a forerunner of design thinking and business innovation, upholds in its trailblazing business designs. It advocates testing business ideas with small and rapid prototyping during the early planning stages. In his KODW workshop “Your Venture is a Prototype: Business Design for Entrepreneurs”, IDEO’s Senior Portfolio Director Ryan Osero will lead us through design- and fun-led business prototyping challenges.

If good design can seamlessly integrate into our everyday life, then good service design should be even more so, not to mention bring about far-reaching impacts. Just think of Amazon, Uber and Deliveroo. In the “Service Design as a Transformational Change Engine” half-day workshop, transport products and services design experts Maxime Szyf and Philip De Wulf from Belgium will unfold the wide-ranging impact of service design on the systemic and organisational levels. They will cast light on how service design can drive desirable changes in your organisation, big or small.

Besides these three topics, other workshop themes include the popular Lego® Serious Play® method, wayfinding design, trend analysis, design thinking for educators, healthcare design and multi-sensory design. Limited spaces are offered for each workshop to ensure an optimal experience for participants. Get your workshop tickets now to grasp the design skills that will help you stay on top of your profession!