Our 2012 theme was "Identity"

This year we explored Identity in a way that went beyond the standard gender/race/age lines. We see Identity as the non-genetic DNA of us, one that is co-created by our environments and ourselves, and which drives in a powerful way our choices, our relationships and our lives. Speakers as diverse as Eric Drooker, New Yorker artist, to Beau Lewis, producer of the American Hipster series, to John Murray, scientist at the SRI International labs, came to share their perspectives on Identity.


Martin Steinert, researcher at the Stanford Center for Design Research

Martin Steinert, Acting Assistant Professor ME, is Deputy Director of the Center for Design Research (CDR) and of the Hasso Plattner Design Thinking Research Program (HPDTRP) at Stanford University. His research focuses on optimizing the intersection between engineering, new product development and the design process.He got hooked on Design Thinking when he spent some time at CDR in 2008 as visiting scholar. In 2009 he continued to explore the field by joining the Product Design and Development group of Prof. Warren Seering, PhD at MIT, again for a semester as visiting scholar. Martin fully "converted" to Design Thinking Research by joining Stanford and Larry's group in April 2010 as Deputy Director of CDR.His special interest is to combine empirical research methods of quantitative and qualitative nature to create a comprehensive research designs. The usual suspects are disruptive technologies or innovations induced by the same and the fuzzy front-end of product design and development.