What does it mean to be a chief design officer?

If you pitched the job of “chief design officer,” 20 years ago, you might’ve been laughed out of the boardroom. Now, design can be found in the C-suite. The U.S. government even has its own chief design officer now—Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia. What does it mean to hold the CDO title today? At By Design, we wanted to know, so we had Mauro Porcini, Samsung’s chief design officer, come on the show. Porcini was among the first chief design officers ever, taking on the role first at 3M and later at PepsiCo. He now holds the same title at Samsung, where he brings a big vision and unique philosophy to the tech company. Below are a few excerpts from the podcast, which have been edited for length and clarity. Check out the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. You pioneered the role of chief design officer. How is this position different from, say, a creative director? First of all, a chief design officer, to me, is a business leader. Many years ago, in my previous company, one of the executives of the company told me, “Mauro, you need to stop always thinking like a design leader. You are an executive of this company, and you need to really think like an executive of the company.” And it was an aha moment because there is a difference between always advocating for design versus elevating yourself to be bigger than that, and really trying to understand how to impact the company—with their goals and their difficulties and complexities—through design. Half of the job is being a business leader. The other half is being a design leader. You need to be able to combine the two, and be a business leader that understands deeply the world of design, but also understands other dimensions of the business, and leverage design, creativity, human centricity—this humanistic approach to innovation—to drive business growth. Does that mean that sometimes you have to swallow your passions as a design leader or creative to be practical when it comes to what this means