The Design Of Business | The Business of Design

The Design of Business | The Business of Design explores how design shapes, and is shaped by, the world around us. Hosted by Ellen McGirt, the podcast features conversations with visionary leaders from a wide range of industries, from architecture and technology to journalism and retail. Together, they examine creative practices, challenge conventional thinking, and explore how design drives business, innovation, and social change. On this season of DB|BD, we are thinking about radical collaboration. Host Ellen McGirt sat down with visionary designers, leaders and thinkers at the 2026 Aspen Business & Society Summit to ask them about the radical act of collaborating with others in a time when it often feels impossible to find common ground.

The Design Of Business | The Business of Design is a business podcast hosted by Design Observer, with 164 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Design Observer hosts The Design Of Business | The Business of Design, a business show with 164 episodes published.

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  Episode #6

  DB|BD at Aspen: Innovation Requires Collaboration with Professor Linda Hill

  Sep 29, 202646 minS13

  No one has better insight on what it takes to lead across space and time than Linda Hill. She has been a professor at Harvard Business School for forty years. Her current title is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration and Faculty Chair of the Leadership Initiative. She’s also started two companies of her own and co-authored three books about leadership. The latest is called Genius at Scale . It’s a guide for leaders on mastering the practice of innovation in a tumultuous time of change using innovative companies like Pixar and Pfizer as case studies. In this conversation with DB|BD host Ellen McGirt, Linda shares the things that all innovative companies practice, even those with radically different functions: they treat their employees decently, they kill ideas that aren’t working and they don’t see genius as a collaborative venture. She also shares her own experience as an entrepreneur and explains why one of the biggest problems with AI is that we are wayfinding and pathfinding at the same time. On this season of DB|BD, we are thinking about radical collaboration. Host Ellen McGirt sat down with visionary designers, leaders and thinkers at the 2026 Aspen Business & Society Summit to ask them about the radical act of collaborating with others in a time when it often feels impossible to find common ground. Visit our site for more on this episode and to view a transcript. Genius at Scale

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  Episode #7

  DB|BD at Aspen: Motivating People is a Design Challenge with Deloitte’s Steve Goldbach

  Sep 29, 202635 minS13

  Steve Goldbach leads Deloitte’s Sustainability and Infrastructure practice. He believes today's leaders face an emerging new design challenge: figuring out how the next generation will build real judgment and taste when AI is taking over so much of the work that used to teach it. He's the co-author, along with his longtime collaborator Geoff Tuff, of three best-selling books on leadership and innovation. His latest is called Hone: How Purposeful Leaders Defy Drift. In this conversation with DB|BD host Ellen McGirt, Steve explains that a business’ culture is a collective outcome of the behavior of people in it and why motivating people to change those behaviors is the ultimate design challenge. He also shares his research on making a business case for sustainability and explains why preparing for an organization’s future lies in the experience of their youngest employees in mind On this season of DB|BD, we are thinking about radical collaboration. Host Ellen McGirt sat down with visionary designers, leaders and thinkers at the 2026 Aspen Business & Society Summit to ask them about the radical act of collaborating with others in a time when it often feels impossible to find common ground. Visit our site for more on this episode and to view a transcript. Make the Business Case from Your Sustainability Initiative from the Harvard Business Review Steve’s latest book, Hone

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  Episode #4

  DB|BD at Aspen: AI is the Greatest Civil Rights Issue of Our Time With Chris Hyams

  Sep 22, 202638 minS13

  Chris Hyams spent 15 years at the job search platform Indeed, becoming its CEO in 2019. When he stepped down in 2025, more than 300 million jobseekers visited Indeed’s site every month. He also 200x’d the company’s revenue. So why would a guy who is so good at what he does step down? According to him, he had a higher calling. Chris believes that AI is the single greatest civil rights issue of our time and he’s appalled it isn’t better regulated. And he’s taking action. Chris is teaching a college course on responsible AI and he’s also Founding Board Member of the Guardrails Alliance, a Super-PAC that was created to fight ANOTHER Super PAC that has invested more than $140 million dollars in snuffing out anti-AI congressional candidates. In this conversation with DB|BD host Ellen McGirt, Chris explains why he is so worried about the unfettered growth of AI. He openly questions the claims made by OpenAI, Anthropic and others who stand to profit from AI. Oh, and he has the data to back it up. On this season of DB|BD, we are thinking about radical collaboration. Host Ellen McGirt sat down with visionary designers, leaders and thinkers at the 2026 Aspen Business & Society Summit to ask them about the radical act of collaborating with others in a time when it often feels impossible to find common ground. Visit our site for more on this episode and to view a transcript. The Guardrails Alliance

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  Episode #5

  DB|BD at Aspen: Dean Erika James Says a Prepared Leader is a Disciplined One

  Sep 22, 202635 minS13

  Erika James became the dean of the Wharton School on July 1, 2020. So she knows a thing or two about leading during a crisis. She even wrote a book about it. Dean James, and her co-author Lynn Perry Wooten, published The Prepared Leader in the fall of 2022. The book breaks down the phases of crisis management and lends some advice on how to make big decisions under pressure. In this conversation with DB|BD host Ellen McGirt, Dean James explains why leading in a crisis-filled world requires discipline. She also details the decisions Wharton is making to prepare its students and her faculty to succeed in an unstable economy that is increasingly reliant on AI. They also chat about the state of DEI and Dean James’ ambivalent thoughts on being the first Black person to serve as Wharton’s dean. On this season of DB|BD, we are thinking about radical collaboration. Host Ellen McGirt sat down with visionary designers, leaders and thinkers at the 2026 Aspen Business & Society Summit to ask them about the radical act of collaborating with others in a time when it often feels impossible to find common ground. Visit our site for more on this episode and to view a transcript. The Prepared Leader

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  The Design Of Business | The Business of Design

  DB|BD Presents: Draw the Line

  Sep 17, 202634 min

  DB|BD is proud to introduce Design Observer's latest podcast: Draw the Line, the inside story of Louisiana’s fight over power, maps, and who gets left off them. Because every district line is a design decision — and every decision is about who gets power. The Supreme Court case Louisiana v. Callais gutted the Voting Rights Act and rewrote the rules of American democracy. As goes Louisiana, so goes the rest of the country. Who's fighting for your vote? This is episode one. In it, host Ellen McGirt travels to Baton Rouge to meet the organizers, legal experts, and everyday citizens on the front lines of the fight against gerrymandering and traces how a dispute over one congressional district became a battle for the future of American democracy. Subscribe to Draw the Line on Apple and Spotify and visit our site for more info. Episodes releasing throughout Fall 2026.

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