Intro: 

Hey friend, welcome back or welcome to the Trend Report. I'm excited that you've joined me for today's conversation. I'm Sid Meadows, and I'm a business advisor, coach, and longtime student of the office furniture industry. And my goal is simple, and that's to share information with you that helps you grow and your business grow each and every day. And I'm really excited for today's conversation because together we're gonna learn something new in this conversation as I welcome our guest, Lisa Gralnek with iF Design to the podcast.

Sid: 

Hey Lisa, how are you?

Lisa: 

I'm well, Sid. Thanks so much for having me.

Sid:  

Well, I know we had a pre-call, so I learned a little bit about you, but I'm excited to dive in because you had a PR person reach out to me, which honestly I never really accept those, but then I dug into who you were a little bit and thought this would be kind of a fun conversation. So before I get started with all my questions, Lisa, please briefly tell us who you are and what is it you do.

Lisa: 

Thanks for that opportunity and and thanks for accepting our PR firm's outreach. Yeah, my name is Lisa Gralnek. I am the managing director of iF Design USA, which is a fully owned subsidiary of iF International Forum Design, which is a nonprofit based in Hanover, Germany, founded in 1953. We are host of the prestigious and largest independent design award in the world called the iF Design Award, as well as we launched an academy recently. Awesome. I'll hopefully talk about. I head up Sustainability and Impact for iF globally, as well as heading the US subsidiary. Uh, and I host a podcast that is part of Sandow's uh Surround Podcast Network, as well as presented now by iF, formerly of uh PBS called Future of XYZ.

Sid: 

Well, Lisa, I think you're just a little bit busy. You kind of sound like me wearing multiple hats.

Lisa:

So it's the best way.

Sid: 

Yeah, it is the best way, right? Never a dull moment in our lives. So, Lisa, you've had a really dynamic career from fashion to strategy to design leadership. For you, what's the through line that connects all of those together?

Lisa: 

You know, it's funny, Sid, I I love this question because for many, many years, you know, recruiters and HR people would ask that. And when you're younger, even if it makes sense to you, if it doesn't make sense to them, it's like it doesn't exist.

Sid: 

Right.

Lisa: 

And I feel really grateful that with each passing year, it makes more and more sense to me because the truth of the matter is the red thread or the through line goes like this. One, always working for values-driven organizations. That is something I've talked about for the last almost 30 years, and it really matters to me. The second is almost always design-led organizations. So I may have always almost always been on the business side or business strategy innovation brand. So kind of at that cross-section of business and design, or business and creative, but always design-led organizations. And then the other piece is building something from nothing. So actually, in my whole career, which is now again almost 30 years long, I have never had a role that existed before. It was either created for me or I'm the first person to step into it. So I've changed industries a bunch, I've changed geographies a bunch, I've changed functions more or less, but there are always roles just like this new subsidiary of iF is, you know, where you're creating and setting a strategy for growth and then operationalizing that in some way.

Sid: 

So we have a couple of things in common there. Strategy. I love strategy. I love creating strategy, and you're doing that. And I also, the uh there was something else you said that, and I just totally forgot what it was, Lisa.

Lisa: 

Jobs that didn't exist before?

Sid: 

Yeah, no, growing things, growing things. And I love growing things, something from nothing or something that's struggling and turning it into something spectacular. I've always been that's always been something I really have navigated or migrated to and done really well in it. So we have a lot more in common than what we realize. But you've also had an adventure that I haven't had, so I'm a little bit jealous because you've actually lived and worked around the world in several different countries. So, how has the exposure to that culture, the design in those different countries, how has that really shaped your perspective to what it is that you're doing today?

Lisa: 

I love this question. I haven't been asked this before. I mean, I mean, I grew up in Southern California in quite a multicultural community. And so from my youngest memories, and then I spent summers on the East Coast, so like culturally different again. Yep. So I think from my youngest years, I really like kind of thought that difference was fascinating and not challenging. And I went abroad the first time, right when I actually celebrated my 14th birthday in Italy on a cultural exchange living with an Italian family. And from that moment forward, I spent as much time as humanly possible, not only traveling, but also largely living in Europe. And I've worked almost exclusively, it turns out, for European companies or international companies. And I think part of that, and I've lived it, I lived in Asia briefly as well. And I think that that very youngly, you know, founded respect for difference has always carried me. And whether that be about the design and where that comes from, or whether it comes from the culture of a business orientation or a language or people or habits, I find it fascinating because it brings new thinking and critical thinking and I guess innovation and creativity to the fore.

Sid:

Well, there's a lot to be said that happens when you live in a different culture. You experience people in a different culture, their beliefs, how they live, all these things that help to really inform who you are and give you a different perspective. If you've only lived in this portion of the world or this portion of the country for your entire life, when you go abroad, you're just your horizons literally are broadened because you're getting exposed to all this. My daughter's going through this now. I think most of the listeners know that she's in graduate school in London and living her best life. And I do worry, because you said something I think I mentioned this to you before, I do worry whether or not she's actually going to come home or not. She's having her best life, but I do love uh what she's being exposed to because I asked her the other day, like, hey, tell me about the new friends that you've met and where are they from? And she was like, Israel, uh India, Norway, Sweden, uh, Arkansas. Like, it just was so interesting to hear all these different types of people and from different cultures that she's getting exposed to and going to school with. So I think it's a great, great experience for you.

Lisa: 

Absolutely.

Sid: 

So you've spoken about this before, and we talked about it earlier in our in our pre-call, but you've talked about design being a force for good. What does that actually mean?

Lisa:

I mean, it means lots of things, right? It is the mission of iF Design Foundation, which is the parent to iF Design GmbH, which is the corporate entity that owns all the subsidiaries and that runs the award in the academy. And what design means as a force for good, however, is you know, and I think about this on the on a futures horizon line. Design in the general population is thought of as like, you know, aesthetics, right? Yep. It's it's pretty things or it's cool technologies. And I really don't. I I think of design as I joke that's the new five Ps, you know, Michael Porter kind of, you know, business school stuff. I think products are designed, we know this. Packaging is designed, we know this. Places are designed, we know this. But platforms are designed, whether we're talking about media platforms or social platforms, or frankly, you know, increasingly AI platforms or electric grid platforms and policies, you know, that dictate everything. These are all designed. And design is kind of this cross-section of, you know, we'll call it the left and the right brain, both the analytical and the data, as well as the creative. And I think that collaboration of these two modalities is really essential. We call it design thinking and it's become a bad word, but design thinking is critical thinking. It's setting up a problem and hypothesizing out and finding the right solutions if we're doing it correctly. So, design as a force for good is actually how do we solve the problems that we face in the world today, whether that is increasing your market share on a beverage so that it stands out on shelf, which I don't think is a hugely critical problem, but it can be if your packaging is important, if your cis, you know, if your workforce is paid well, if your, you know, inputs to the material goods are renewable, for instance.

Sid:

Yep.

Lisa: 

It's also, you know, how do we solve the problem of electrical outages in sub-Saharan Africa where people have are increasingly using, you know, mobile devices to pay bills, connect with each other, et cetera, but they need to charge the phone and you need to have an active network. There are huge solutions of design around the world that are innovative and meaningful and additive. That's that's how I think about it.

Sid: 

Well, but as I'm listening to you describe this, it really highlights that design is in almost all aspects of our life.

Lisa:

A hundred percent.

Sid: 

Like you mentioned the soda can potentially, but you also mentioned energy, electricity, networks, packaging. The way packaging is designed, I mean so many things that is that is a through line almost to everything. And you understand when you hear somebody like you explain it why design is so important. Our world of design is just a little bit different where we're focusing on the built environment, if you will, but design is a through line to pretty much the world, so many different things.

Lisa:

Totally. And Sid, I just add, like I didn't even think about this before, although I think about it a lot. It's like process design. I mean, if you think about the built environment, even thinking about you know the the protocols to get something built, how do you spec materials, for instance, a commercial space? The process of doing that is also designed by someone. And if it's thought through and well received, actually that works well for the contract furniture industry, that works well for the the vendors, that works well for the the contractors, and that works well for the end users. So, I mean, it's I guess it's a six P.

Sid:

Yeah, it's a win-win for everybody. So you've mentioned iF design a couple of times. So tell us exactly who is iF Design and a little bit about the origin story of the organization.

Lisa: 

Thank you for asking. So iF Design started in Hanover, Germany, where our headquarters still is, kind of in the post-war period when the British were still in charge of kind of the Allies, if you will, divided up Europe to help rebuild. And in the early 50s, northern Europe and especially northern Germany was still very, very affected by the decimation of the war. And there is this long, long history since the industrial revolution of industrial manufacturing and industrial design in Northern Europe and especially in northern Germany. And so the Brits named Hanover as a location for a huge industrial design trade fair called the Hanover Messe or the Hanover Trade Fair. And this is where like Dieter Homs like came out of and like Braun when he was at Braun and like all these big companies where they would show it was the largest in the world for many decades, the industrial era of the 1950s and 60s, you know, which was really kind of the heyday of industrial design, if you will. And iF was the original award component of the Hanover Messe.

Sid: 

Okay.

Lisa: 

And so starting in 1954, we gave our first award, always structured as a nonprofit, subsequently been reorganized. But the iF Design Award is what we are best known for. And the iF Design Award now every year welcomes about 11,000 entries from about 75 countries across nine design disciplines, which include product, packaging, branding and communications, service and systems and process design, UX, UI, but also architecture and interior architecture, as well as concepts and all of those.

Sid: 

I looked through the list and I was blown away at how comprehensive the list was. I'm like, oh my gosh, look at all these categories. Like, this is like crazy. And you have jurors that judge these. I can only imagine like 11,000 entrants. How long does it take to actually look at the entrance and judge and then make your decision about the orgs? How long is that?

Lisa: 

So we have a two-step process. It's very, very objective. It's a we invested quite heavily in our digital tech, both on the application side, but also the jury tool. So we do a preliminary online jury um round, and that is about four days, three and a half days of private scoring as well as deliberation across the five juring criteria, which are equal for idea, form, function, differentiation, and sustainability as of last year, which I'm extremely proud of. I think we're the only design award in the world that has sustainability fully integrated into the primary juring criteria and not apart. And that's both uh environmental and social uh sustainability or impact. And so there's an initial, and then the top 50% of all entries goes on to a final jury, which we actually run over the course of two and a half days in person in Germany. Oh wow. And we bring about a hundred jurors to that. Now we do not balance the top scores by discipline or category or geography. So it's just if you have someone who is a hardcore, no, this is not going to get scored above this level and it falls below the threshold. Well, you don't end up with a lot of cars as happened last year, for instance, um, in the final jury. But we do. We have subject matter experts, we have people, the likes of fellows of AIA, we have CEOs of companies, we have uh global design directors, global creative directors. I mean, one of our jurors is uh Cheryl Durst, who I'm sure your audience will know well. Um, Cheryl is the CEO and president of um IIDA, so the International Interior Design Association, among many others from around the world. So they put in a lot of time and effort. And um, you know, it's uh it's a pretty hardcore. They each in the preliminary round are doing about 300 to 400 entries that they're scoring.

Sid:

So I'm working hard to get Cheryl to come on the podcast in season seven, which will kick off in February. So hopefully I can I'll see her in January. So hopefully I can convince her to come onto the show and have a conversation about things like this. But so that's a lot of entries. So let's for a minute talk just specifically about your furniture categories because most of my people are furniture listeners. So tell me about your furniture categories.

Lisa: 

So furniture all falls under product design discipline, and we have 93 categories across these nine disciplines, but the furniture specifically under product design, we have office, which is broad, furniture and home decoration. So that would be normal things like couches or whatever. We have lighting, which is a hugely popular category. We have wall, floor, and textiles, kitchen, household tools and appliances, tableware, bathroom, garden and outdoor living, building technology, public use retail. And this year, I mean we update each year, but this year we have connected product ecosystems, which is really exciting.

Sid: 

What does that mean?

Lisa: 

Well, I think about an example of like let's say Lutron, for instance, their new systems all are blinds and lights and audio together. And so when you're you no longer, it's not just the the fixture on the wall that is the lighting, and it's no longer just the sound bar or the blind. It's the fact that they all integrate. Now, a lot of these companies also do install, right? And so you're talking about interior architecture also as a discipline where some of these can do finished projects. So that's residential or mixed-use interiors or corporate and office interiors. And now we redid that. So there are now 10 different examples, including exhibitions and installations, so temporary things as well as trade fairs. So if your booth is really amazing at, you know, at Neocon, for instance, you could actually submit to the IRS Design Award for that rather than a specific product, for instance.

Sid: 

Okay, okay. So that's very great. That's great. It's all super interesting. I have a statement and then a question for you. So I have a 94th award category for you.

Lisa: 

Oh, okay. Tell me.

Sid: 

Podcast.

Lisa: 

We don't do podcasts.

Sid: 

I know, but I was looking through the list. I'm like, well, there's no podcast here. Like they should add podcasts, they got everything else covered.

Lisa: 

I know. What we did add this year though, Sid, which is interesting, is writing for design under branding and communication discipline.

Sid: 

Yeah.

Lisa: 

Which is really an interesting, you know, example of like what do journalists say, or what does a copywriter write about a product? Like, are there examples of that? So that's um that's a first-time category for us this year.

Sid: 

That's great. I love that you're expanding it, looking around what's happening in the world, writers certainly journalists. And you and I are considered a journalist based on what we do as early sub podcasters, but very interesting. So we know a lot about awards here in the U.S. We know about the IDA awards and the best of neocon awards and other things. Why is it, at least from my my humble perspective, that an award that has been around since the 1950s that we don't know about in the United States as much as we should for something that's been around that long?

Lisa: 

I think it's a very important question. And I would say that when I was approached for this role, I also was like, it can't be serious. I've never heard of it. And then you start looking into it. And the answer is quite simple. The prior CEO had been in the role for almost 30 years and was very, very heavily focused on Europe and Asia. So we have had subsidiaries in Taiwan, China, Japan, and South Korea, um, as well as affiliate offices in Brazil, Turkey, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy for now over 20 years. Wow. We are extraordinarily well known in Europe, in Brazil specifically, not necessarily South America, and especially in Asia. If you go to Asia, I mean, my CEO, when he goes to Seoul, for instance, in South Korea, the capital of South Korea, he will meet with the mayor at times. He will go to China and he will be invited to ribbon cuttings from major innovation centers. You know, you're meeting with the top, top people. You have corporate presentations that talk in the first slide of the design team how many IF design awards they've won. In the US, we have companies like Apple, who has won more iF design awards than any other company in the whole world.

Sid: 

Well, they should actually, the products.

Lisa: 

They don't talk about it because Apple uses it as an internal metric, right? For talent recognition, acquisition, and competitive analysis, not as a way of talking about it marketing-wise. And you have companies like Pepsi who also use it for their lead innovations, right? So things that are not in their normal portfolio, but as a way of challenging the status quo. Mauro Porcini, who just went over to Samsung, is an example. His team was pushing the envelope at Pepsi. You have very small companies. You have a studio, for instance, out of San Francisco industrial design studio called Whipsaw. They have participated every year for 26 years, and they do that because they get so much recognition out of the wins and out of the feedback that our jurors give in these criteria. Why it's not known is because of these various things, which is it's largely industrial design. Over 75% of our applications in the US are coming out of industrial design because that's where we're known. And then you have a lot of companies that keep it close. So our hope is, especially in the architecture, um, interior architecture and you know, let's call it design space. In that sense, we're really hoping to grow. It's why I show up at NeoCon. It's why I'm thrilled that my podcast is part of Sandow. Uh, it's why I'm thrilled to be invited on this podcast.

Sid:

So all great information. The deadline to entry is coming up. When is the deadline?

Lisa: 

The deadline is November 5th for the 2026 award. So we are in the final throws. It is not nearly as daunting an application process as one might think. Although if you had applied early, you would have a lot more time. But it's a it's a very, very robust process, but we guide it well. There's lots of help, and I'm always available if people have questions.

Sid: 

So if you're interested in learning more, you can head over to their website. We'll drop that link down in the show notes so you can see. But you got to act quickly. You got about a week from the time this episode publishes till the deadline. So, all right. So, Lisa, we've talked a little bit about iF and what you do and the awards, but you've also been expanding. And now you have the iF Design Academy, where you've talked about that design leaders need a new kind of education. So, tell us what is the iF Design Academy?

Lisa:

It's really exciting, and it's a it's a very obvious, it seems to me, extension of the mission of iF Design. So, just to back up for a second, so iF has the iF Design Award, which we've been talking about extensively. So, thank you for that. We also offer an iF Design Student Award that gets about 10,000 entries every year, and we give about, we not about, we give 50,000 euros of prize money away to the winners there, and we bring them together for a big gala, like we do for the award night. Last year it was at the Guggenheim Bilbao, and they were invited to three days of education and tours and things. The other award that we run twice a year and we give 50,000 euros to each round is the iF Social Impact Prize. Now, that's for established NGOs and social entrepreneurs, so not ideas, but things that exist, often micro. We have a hundred projects from 130 countries that applied this last year. And both the student award and the social impact prize are how does design, coming back to design as a force for good, how does design ladder or solve for one or more of the United Nations sustainable development goals, the UN SDGs? So it's a very different thing than the iF Design Award, which is pure design, even though sustainability is built in. We have content, obviously, we publish an annual trend report to the name of your podcast, which is a very robust document with macro trends and academic research. We have an online magazine, we have newsletters, we have the podcast. The academy, coming back to your question, is in fact the natural kind of expansion, I think, of all of these efforts to really bring design excellence and impact to the fore. The foundation's mission is academic research and education at a very esoteric level. It is, you know, it's it's that. The design academy that we're offering is executive education for mid to senior level design leaders in business who need to level up their personal development skills, who need better business fluency because a lot of, you know, people don't speak the language of a PL or of their CFOs or their CEOs, and we're losing designers in the C-suite all the time, which is a huge concern of mine, frankly. They need help operationalizing and scaling their design teams and expanding organizational influence. And then lastly, we really need to be looking ahead to the future. What are the skills of the future? AI, emerging tech, sustainability, things like this. And so we're offering online for now cohorts that are live and recorded combinations over the course of five weeks, our first courses. And each course, we have you can go to the website, which is ifdesign-academy.com, and you can learn about our courses. They just kicked off in September. So we're in the beginning stages, but we have really, really impressive design leaders who are teaching these and lecturing. So the former head of McKinsey Design, for instance, is lecturing in one, and the former head of uh design at HP is leading one of these courses. So these are really, really amazing leaders. You're gonna be in cohort with a lot of people from around the world and learning things that you need to up level not only your own career, but also your team.

Sid: 

And so, what's the criteria to join, or is there any criteria to join the academy?

Lisa: 

There's no criteria. I mean, what we would obviously look and see that you're in the design world. Right. Although one might be able to say, like, I, you know, I don't actually know how that would work. But if someone's a business leader and they want to learn from the design perspective, maybe they could take it too. But you just go online and you apply, it's uh all classes are exactly the same price. And this year we're offering um a small discount because this is the first time we're running it. And so we're offering people to be able to give us feedback so that we can, again, just like we do with the categories in the iF Design Award, stay relevant and make sure that we're serving the greater good of the industry.

Sid: 

And this would be available to industrial design, product design, anything that we talked about earlier that fits into that category of design. So it's not just interior designers or interior architects or anything like that. It could be any if you have something that's relative to design, this program's gonna help you up-level professionally and personally to get to the next step in your career. Okay, love it.

Lisa:

Absolutely. Associate creative directors, typographers, advertisers, interior designers, you know, contract furniture makers, you know, all of the above and more.

Sid: 

So I would say that if you're a young designer, I'm air quoting designer to broaden the scope of it, but if you're a young designer and you've been in a firm, because that's who we talk to. So if you've been in an architectural firm for a couple of years and you want to uplevel your career, this sounds like something you might want to explore. It's an organized cohort. You're gonna be with people from around the world and you're gonna be educated by worldwide design leaders, some of them you probably know their names. They could be a great thing for a good way for you to invest in yourself to further your career, whether that furthering your career happens tomorrow or two years from now, you're investing in yourself. And I'm a huge advocate of that. My only comment would be is that let's just not limit it to design leaders, let's broaden the scope of it and just like in leaders in general or aspiring leaders might be a good word, but I understand why it's to design because I'm a huge advocate of education, professional development, and growth. 

Lisa:

So 100%. And I think one of the things that I'm very passionate about as well, Sid, is this cross-section. You know, I have an MBA and I was uh my program had a crossover with Art Center uh in Pasadena. We had one course, and those students were able to come to the business school and take courses, and we took one course together, which was a product development course. And it was really fascinating, I think, for everyone involved, but it's something that's rare. And unfortunately, I think design students don't learn the language of business, and I and we see it all the time. And, you know, I again I've always worked in design-led companies, and even in those organizations, we're starting to see the downward pressure on design as something extemporaneous. And we need the design leaders to be able to stand up for themselves and speak the language of business and margin and market share and all the things. So I think all of what we're trying to bring to the table is how do we, you know, support the design community to really advocate, if you will, for itself and its reason for being?

Sid: 

I think it's fantastic. All right. So we got two more things I want to talk about before we wrap up today.

Lisa: 

Okay.

Sid: 

And one of them is obviously you are a fellow podcaster. You mentioned earlier your podcast, Future of XYZ, is actually hosted on the Surrounds Network, our friends over there at Sandow Media. And so what was the inspiration that said, I'm gonna raise my hand and I'm gonna start a podcast?

Lisa: 

Uh COVID.

Sid: 

You and I are again, we have something in common. That was mine too.

Lisa: 

Yeah, no, I mean, you know, you remember Sid. I mean, we've all locked into our homes and behind a computer. And I, as I mentioned, my career has touched many, many aspects of business, the world, industry, functions. And I found over the course of COVID, I was I'd been running my own consultancy at that point for six years or so, and um, maybe it was five years at that point, and I was meeting very a lot of really interesting people just all the time. And I joined an executive women's group and I was meeting even more interesting people, and I have this broad network from my business school, and you know, you were just having conversations, and someone had said to me before COVID, oh, you should start podcasts. And then someone else said, You have no time for that. So I wasn't playing with it, but I started thinking these conversations are really interesting. You know, they're just engaging, people are communicating. So I started recording videos of these conversations, and I called it future of XYZ because I've always been considered myself a futurist before this futurist thing came to life.

Sid:

Yep.

Lisa: 

And future of XYZ was XYZ is like whatever. It's a it's a multiple variable that can be anything, it's a holding line. It's also how I referred to destinations and strategies like you're going to destination XYZ because for every organization or every division, it was something different.

Sid:

Yep.

Lisa: 

And so I called a future. Of XYZ, and my first guest was the former CEO of Dannon or Danone, who had become at that point the world's largest B Corporation. And Lorna Davis was a friend and colleague, and she agreed to be my first guest. And we talked, you know, uh about the future of humanity was the topic. It was nice and small. And over the course of the five years, and now in September, we celebrated our 100 or released our 150th episode.

Sid: 

Congrats.

Lisa: 

Thank you. Thank you very much. With the former head of design at Google X, Nick Foster, who just came out with a book about thinking about the future. So we went really meta and said the future of thinking about the future for episode 150, um, which was amazing. But I think, you know, I I got into this podcasting thing because there are so many interesting people in the world doing fascinating things. And how do you share that expertise with people? And how also, I mean, frankly, it's a selfish passion project. I love, I love these conversations. They're they're great. So Future of XYZ is the name of it. And uh, it's now presented by iF Design and as you mentioned, part of Sandow Surround Podcast Network.

Sid: 

So again, something that we have in common in, you know, you want to interview people from around the world and give them a you know, give people your audience a glimpse into who they are and what they do. And that's exactly what we do here. Is we feel like we're your inside look at the people, the products, and the ideas that are shaping the future of the workplace design and the built environment. So it's exactly what we do. Very similar again. I'm loving this. I love it. Thinking about the future. Is there a particular guest or a topic that you're really excited about exploring or getting onto your show? Can you give us a little glimpse into the future? Like, who are you coming on or who do you want to come on?

Lisa: 

Oh gosh. I mean, I love I'm always like asked, like, who's your favorite child? And I couldn't tell you my favorite episodes. Some are just like really blow you away. Some often with people I know well, I've come to realize that, um, or someone I'm just totally fascinated with, uh, they get really wonky. And like, I think that they're great episodes. And then, you know, you realize that you're like in your own, your own, in your own world sometimes. But, you know, we actually have that. I I just mentioned the former head of design for McKinsey, Tay Bannerman, is actually the next episode. And he's talking about how AI is is he wanted to talk about the future being replaced. So how designers are being replaced by AI or not being replaced.

Sid: 

So I love this.

Lisa: 

Yeah, so that's an interesting topic. And he's an AI expert and designer, obviously. After that, I'm super honored. And both both Tay and Marshall Ware are people who spoke at the iF Design Trend Conference that we hosted in Berlin the day after our awards ceremony last April. And that just happens. And so actually, we have the head of applied RD at Foster and Partners coming on the week after that. She is a computer scientist, mathematician, and architect, and she runs a team of about 25 people who fit that same profile within Foster and Partners. Uh, Lord Norman Foster came to the award ceremony, was given our second annual Lifetime Achievement Award and spoke for about 20 minutes this last year. Dieter Rams had gotten the first one the year before. So it's pretty exciting when these gentlemen show up and and and and ladies too soon show up on stage and really share their expertise with us. But Martha is just like Cigari is her name, and she is brilliant. And it may be one of those wonky things because it's talking about things like, you know, how do you get 80% of the way there, putting the inputs into a project, you know, design in the algorithm? How do you use robots to double check certain exposures and things and solar loads and things like that? And then use that data set in order to build an even better, you know, and more innovative and often more sustainable and you know, architectural project. And so it's really exciting. And then we have people like, you know, the first of the year, we'll have um the head of Dolby Sound um talking about, you know, the future of movie going. So we we have we have chefs, and it's always now around creativity and culture and design and um, you know, all the things, the topics we all love.

Sid: 

So I've listened to a couple episodes, they're great, they're short, but we will be sure to drop a link to your website and to the episode on Apple and Spotify down in the show notes so people can go and check it out and uh give Lisa a little bit of support. So last thing I want to talk about, Lisa, is sustainability. You mentioned that you're really passionate about sustainability and in the world of design, especially the furniture world of design, it can be defined in a lot of different ways. How do you define sustainability?

Lisa: 

You know, it's an amazing thing. When I came out of grad school in 2008, I had gone to grad school after 10 years in the fashion industry, nine years in the fashion industry to do sustainability and luxury. And it was uh unfortunately in the collapse of 08, that was not the topic that anyone was talking about. But people would also challenge me and say, Well, you don't you've never worked in this industry before. And you'd be like, uh, there's not even a global definition of sustainability. What are you talking about? Now, fast forward 20 years, and we still don't have a global definition of sustainability, which is just tragic. And it and it dilutes what sustainability means. Sustainability can mean a lot of different things. To me and to iF, sustainability is uh equal parts social impact and environmental impact. On the environmental side, you could look at it through a circular lens, you know, the lens of circularity, but it doesn't have to be. It just needs to be thinking about how do we not only think about extraction, single use, waste. We have to think about reuse, repurpose, recycling, you know, and all of these aspects that minimize what we are taking away from the planet and what we're adding in waste to the planet, either in terms of emissions of production, you know, you think about the dyes that are used, the water that is used, the materiality that is used, and or thrown away. That is first and foremost on the environmental side. On the built environment side, there are other considerations about health and wellness for the human inhabitants, as well as the materiality, longevity, reuse, repurposing, obviously, energy, water, these kinds of you know, inputs. And then on the human side, every single thing that we do. So you think about education in a website, right? How much like Flash is beautiful, it looks great, but at the end of the day, it uses an enormous amount of energy. AI platforms and integrations are fantastic, but they are going to destroy our planet faster than anything else we've ever seen. So, how do we help educate along the way? How do we make choices that might not be the prettiest or the best design brief, but actually are responsible? And I think about it on packaging. I mean, my greatest, I mean, maybe this is a sad uh example, but when I was the vice president of brand and innovation at Chobani, we did, you know, I did a brand architecture of the products for our creative team to then do what became a total packaging overhaul. We could not redo the actual physical packaging, the plastic, but we redesigned the shrink wrap around it. Well, if you have a yogurt container, right, and it goes through the recycling, that's great. But half the time, the laser that reads what kind of plastic can't get through that shrink wrap. So you have to take the shrink wrap off of it in order for the lens to see what it is. And my greatest claim to fame is convincing our team to have a tear strip on it that says if you're looking for it, just like Siggi's yogurt does on the paper container, you rip it off, you throw that away, and then you're left with a pure plastic that then at least has a better chance of getting recycled in the right place. It is a very small thing, but on packaging, those kinds of details of cons educating a consumer, whether they go to that level or not of commitment, but at least you offer them the education to know that that's what it is. So I think that's all part of sustainability. And again, every aspect I've just described comes down to design choices. So for me, sustainability on the social and environmental side is like that's where design for you know uh the greater good really comes in is how do we think through not just where it's all coming from, but what how it's going to be used and where it's going after?

Sid: 

At the end of its life, basically. What happens at the end of its life? It's full life. The yogurt, we're huge Chobani fans in my house.

Lisa: 

Nice.

Sid: 

But I also I work out in the every morning. I typically have a protein shake, and some of the protein shakes I buy have the label printed on the bottle, and some of them are wrapped in plastic. And I just call I I called myself the other day looking at the two different bottles and thinking, why don't they just print on the bottle? Why are they wrapping the bottle that seems such a waste of plastic? Because now you got the plastic bottle and the plastic wrap when you could just print on it that goes directly back to design.

Lisa: 

It depends. It depend I'm not gonna get into the wonkiness. It depends on the type of plastic and the process and whether you're co-packing. And there are a lot of considerations on why you might not be able to print directly on the bottle and why it might not actually be better either. Oh but yes, I mean there we just have too much plastic in our in our in our consumer goods in this world, in our grocery stores and on our airplanes and everywhere else in between.

Sid: 

Because I'm drinking water out of a plastic bottle. But I do reuse the bottle on a regular basis. I do all the time, actually. We actually have a filler, a water container thing in our pantry back there where I filled the water. All right, so uh we'll wrap up with this. And and you know, in the furniture world, in the our side of the design world, uh I honestly feel like a lot of times sustainability is just a checkbox that we say that we do this and we say that we do that just because we're checking the box. How is IF doing anything to help advance sustainability standards and where we're headed? Because and this is a kind of a two-part question because the designers in our industry that work at the firms that are specifying furniture don't fully understand sustainability. And they see a a checkbox that says this product is BIFMA level three certified, which is great and it's a great initiative. But what the designer doesn't realize is that by checking BIFMA level three required that he or she just eliminated 50 plus percent of the brands that make furniture that they could be specified on this project because there's such a small selection of products and firms that are actually BIFMA level three certified because of the complexities with that program. It's a great program, but just because of the complexity. So, what is iF doing to lead this initiative to help come up with global standards, if anything?

Lisa:

So I'm really proud of the work we're doing. And it's a we're at the kind of in year two and a half of a of a multi-year journey. We have created first and foremost a sustainability working group, which is sim operates similarly to our jury. It's outside experts who are experts in sustainability from across industries as well as organizations like the Ellen MacArthur Foundation who advise me and our award team on kind of where we're going and how to ask questions. What are the certifications that matter? Again, we have 93 categories and entries from you know over 70 countries, and nothing is globalized or very, very little is globalized. So we are constantly kind of evolving. What we have done first and foremost, starting with the 2025 award, is consider sustainability as 20% of the score. That is already way more than what any other design award in the world, to our knowledge, is doing. And what we do in that is you just like you do for the others, you have a form fill where you explain what you are doing. We additionally ask three optional questions for each discipline or category that are tailor-made to it. So it might be in architecture, for instance, one of those optional questions is which design decisions were made to prioritize lower energy consumption and reduce resource use during daily operations. So then that's a you have a checkbox, right? Or what sustainable design strategies are incorporated into the design of this product. And then we have the R ladder of circularity, without calling it the R ladder because that's really wonky, but things like, you know, repairability and recyclability. And so really trying to educate each level around along the way, and then we have certifications. We have 75 certifications we've now identified that are now uh across across all these different things. They are not it, they are not exclusive. We recognize that, but they are the ones that we all recognize as being the biggest. So lead platinum, lead gold, lead silver, for instance, in architecture, Bream as as the European version of lead, right? You also have things like uh ISO 5001, which is more inclusive. And then you have a couple that are corporate level, so 1% for the planet or or B Corporation that have more rigorous global standards, but most are at the project or product level. And so right now, our first step is to say, this is 20% of the score. Here are the things that we think matter the most in this particular category or discipline. How are you thinking about it? Got it. And with each passing year, we evolve it a little further and we're pushing. And those experts, those sustainability experts, advise our jurors. They do not have voting rights, but they advise our jurors. So as we go along in the process as well, when you think about the head of you know UX for Samsung, who was a juror last year, for instance, or people who are running their own studios around the world, they are also continuingly getting educated on what sustainability excellence looks like as we go forward, as are the applicants themselves. So that's how we're right now contributing.

Sid: 

Well, it's an important topic. It's one that our industry needs to continue to talk about. The world needs to continue to talk about it. As an industry, we use a lot of the world's natural resources and we need to figure out our part of this and how we do better. You know, statistics show that about 17, uh, 17 billion tons of office furniture go into a landfill on an annual basis. That's about 50 percent of the think about the electronics behind it. So much, but we it it's something we need to continue to talk about. You said this earlier. We need to challenge the status quo with this. We need to challenge people to do better, we need to challenge businesses to do better so that collectively we can do better for our planet and leave our planet better for the people coming out behind us. So Lisa. This has been a fascinating conversation. I have learned so much. I'm super excited to have met you. I really appreciate you joining me today. If our listeners would like to get in touch with you, what is the best way for them to do that?

Lisa: 

My personal favorite is LinkedIn. So feel free to link in with me. Um, you can uh also obviously follow iF Design on LinkedIn, on Instagram, visit the website ifdesign.com, or you can follow Future of XYZ and subscribe anywhere you get your favorite podcasts and on YouTube.

Sid: 

Well, we're gonna have all that down in the show notes. Be sure that if you reach out to Lisa on LinkedIn, let her know that you heard her here on the trend report. That's why you're reaching out. So, Lisa, last question. If there's one thing, one action, if you will, that you would like our listener to take after hearing this conversation, what would that be?

Lisa:

Visit ifdesign.com, explore the website, explore it's a great resource. I mean, we've indexed all winners since 1954. So even if you're not even thinking about participating or anything else, the content inspiration is exceptional. So I would say visit ifdesign.com, check it out, see what it's all about, and um use it as a resource for your own research as well.

Sid: 

Thank you so much again. 

Outro:

Hey, thank you for listening and joining us for this conversation. Go out there and make today great. And we'll see you right back here in a couple of weeks. Take care, everyone.