"Designing for People Gives Business an Edge, International Telecast a Success!"

Marketers, business executives, designers, design and business school faculty and students at 43 locations around the world tuned into The Business Edge. The two-hour telecast presented a unique opportunity to see first hand case studies on achieving business success through user focused design. "The objective of the program was to expand the discussion about the value of high quality design," says Peter Lawrence, the program's Executive Producer and Chairman and Founder of Corporate Design Foundation. "We created a new platform by which we can bring more people to understand how observation and comprehension of the user's needs, translated through design, results in corporate success."

With sites in across the continental United States, Canada, and the Pacific Rim, the program reached an audience of 4000. As part of the landmark broadcast, The Business Edge featured interaction with its audience in the form of viewer questions. Over 250 questions were registered during the broadcast from all 43 locations.

Broadcast from MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, The Business Edge featured previously recorded and edited video together with live commentary from a panel of business and design experts: MIT Professor Steven Eppinger, IBM Design Director, Lee Green, Co-Founding Editor of Fast Company, Alan Webber, and Mr. Lawrence. The case studies featured interviews with senior corporate executives and internal or consultant designers of five companies which exhibited exceptional design in achieving business success:

• Acela, the design and promotion for Amtrak's new high speed train. Interviews with George Warrington, CEO, Amtrak, Barbara Richardson, Senior Vice President, Amtrak, and designers from IDEO and OH & CO.
• Humanscale, producer of the new Freedom Chair. Interviews with Bob King, President, Humanscale, Niels Diffrient, Designer, and Jon Craine, Designer
• IBM, branding and product development in a revitalized design program. Interviews with Abby Kohnstamm, Senior Vice President Marketing, IBM, and Lee Green, Director of Corporate Identity & Design, IBM.
• OXO International, producer of the Good Grips line of products. Interviews with Sam Farber, Founder, OXO Intentional, Alex Lee, President, OXO International; Davin Stowell, President, Smart Design, and designers from Smart Design.
• SEI Investments, the office environment as an instrument of cultural change. Interviews with Al West, Founder and CEO, SEI Investments, Jeffery Scherer, Architect, Meyer Scherer & Rockcastle, and SEI employees.

You can order your copy of the Business Edge video by completing the downloadable form. Videos are available for individual order ($50) or as part of a set. The `Business Edge Complete Set' ($100) includes the VHS tape, a complete text trancscript of the program, 20 program guides, and supporting editions of @issue: The Journal of Business and Design. The editions of @issue provide packground reading on three of the five featured companies from the Business Edge: OXO, IBM, and Amtrak.

The Business Edge teleconference was produced by the Corporate Design Foundation, sponsored by National Endowment for the Arts, with support from Fast Company Magazine, Metropolis Magazine, and produced in collaboration with Bailey Design Group, Rochester Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Carnegie Mellon University.

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