Iraqi-born Zaha Hadid, was the first

woman to win the prestigious

Pritzker Architecture Prize. She

moved to London in 1972, and she

continues to work there as head of

the eponymous architecture firm she

founded in 1980. Having made a

name as an esoteric, wildly

experimental designer and thinker,

she wowed peers, critics, and would-

be clients with her first project to be

built, a sharply angular concrete fire station in Germany in 1993. Her first American building

was the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, built in 2003. She's currently

working on the MAXXI, the National Museum of XXI Century Arts in Rome.

Steve Jobs is widely held to be the

design maestro at Apple (AAPL). But

Ive, the company's senior vice-

president for industrial design, also

requires nothing less than perfection

from his team. Ive, has overseen such

iconic products as the iMac, iPod,

iPhone, and, most recently, the iPad.

In so doing, he and his team have

produced a range of products that

have been central to the company's

revitalization. For his part, Ive says he prioritizes "better" over "new" and favors user-friendly

design that is simple to use and understand, a philosophy that many have copied, few have

repeated.

Talk to Larry Keeley about the value

of design, and he'll immediately

challenge you to prove it. As

president and co-founder of the

Chicago consultancy Doblin, Keeley

has spent his career developing

systems that companies can use to

improve the chances of their

innovation strategies ever paying off.

Infeasibly fluent in all matters

pertaining to design and design

thinking (and pretty much any other topic you care to bring up), Keeley is a polymath who

influences C-suite executives and students alike.

Dean of the Rotman School of

Management at the University of

Toronto since 1998, Martin, is a keen

proponent of the discipline of design

thinking, or as he describes it,

"integrative thinking." A prolific

author, Martin has one foot in

business and the other in design and

acts as an eloquent and forceful

liaison between the two disciplines.

(Martin's 13 years with Monitor, a

strategy consulting firm in Cambridge, Mass., probably prepared him for this arbitration role.)

A director at Thomson Reuters and Research in Motion (RIMM), he was recently to be found

calling for a radical rethinking of the MBA program, making the case that unleashing class after

class of "jargon-spewing economic vandals" is perhaps a less than smart strategy.

As China undergoes an

extraordinary period of evolution, its

architecture has also changed

dramatically. One architect who is

influential both within and outside

the ancient nation is Ma, who has

worked on numerous large projects

in China and who acted as planning

expert for the 2008 Olympic Games

in Beijing. Ma's Shanghai firm,

MADA s.p.a.m., is focused on

producing eye-catching buildings such as the soon-to-be-completed Xian Television complex,

while the firm's work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale and the Pompidou Centre in

Paris. He is currently dean of the architecture school at the University of Southern California.

Dutch architect and Harvard

professor Koolhaas, is famous both

for his unconventional design ideas

and his provocative writings on

urbanism and architecture. Koolhaas

co-founded the Office for

Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in

1975, and the firm now has offices in

Rotterdam, Beijing, Hong Kong, and

New York. OMA's reputation for

avant-garde architecture has been

boosted by bold designs such as the CCTV building in Beijing and the Seattle Central Library.

AMO, meanwhile, is an internal innovation arm of the company that looks beyond buildings to

consider the global big picture of projects.

In 1980, Moggridge designed the Grid Compass, the world's first laptop computer. In the ensuing years, he has become a prominent design-world figure, co-founding innovation consultancy IDEO in 1991 and working around the world to promote the power of design not just within technology but within all aspects of life. In January, Moggridge, was named the director of the Smithsonian Institution's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, where he says his mission will be to inspire "interest, understanding, and engagement with all disciplines of design."

Nielsen's views on Web design have

made the Internet both useful and

easy to use. Nielsen, got his PhD in

human-computer interaction from

the Technical University of Denmark

in Copenhagen. He worked at his

alma mater before moving to the

U.S. to work at what was then

Bellcore (Bell Communications

Research) and the User Interface

Institute at IBM (IBM). In 1994 he

joined Sun Microsystems (JAVA) as a "distinguished engineer," and it was there that he

immersed himself in the then-emerging field of Web usability. In the ensuing years he has

made a name as an unflinching proponent of user-friendly Web design and is now working to

apply his thinking to mobile interfaces.

A former Apple vice-president and

co-founder with Jakob Nielsen of

the Nielsen Norman Group,

Norman, recently announced his

retirement from Northwestern

University. But don't count him out

just yet. He recently caused an

uproar in the design world with his

assertion that when it comes to

radical innovation, design research

is "essentially useless." Provocative,

straightforward, and never less than insightful, Norman is currently working on an updated

version of his book, The Design of Everyday Things, already a must-read for any executive

looking to understand the scope of design.

Smith's philosophy: Low-cost, low-

tech solutions made locally can

help communities in developing

countries address crippling

problems. The MIT engineer and

professor spent time in India as a

child and in Botswana as a Peace

Corps volunteer, where she saw

the devastation of poverty

firsthand. Her inventions include a

hammermill to convert grain to

flour as well as an incubator that requires no electricity. Smith was awarded the MacArthur

"genius" grant in 2004, and she runs the popular and influential D-Lab class at MIT to teach

international development and technology in the developing world.

Starck, is a polarizing figure in the

world of product design. Some are

bewitched by the maverick

thinker's take on products, from

chairs to juicers to, recently, a

spaceship interior. Others are

enraged by his slick showmanship.

None seem able to ignore him

completely. Starck most recently

blazed a trail across British

television screens as the host and

arbiter of a design-related reality show. Meanwhile his longstanding partnerships with

hoteliers such as Ian Schrager and Sam Nazarian have introduced the concept of a sleek home-

away-from-home to a whole demographic of global travelers.

Currently principal researcher at

Microsoft Research (MSFT) (and, it

should be said, a regular

Bloomberg/BusinessWeek

columnist), Buxton, brings a whole

host of forces to play in his design

practice. Having started out as a

composer and performer (even

designing his own digital musical

instruments), he later specialized

in human-computer interaction,

working at organizations such as Xerox PARC (XRX) and Alias/Wavefront. For Buxton, a

product's form is just one relatively uninteresting part of the design equation. Instead, he looks

to introduce human values, culture, and technology into his work and spreads his ideas

through tireless writing, research, speaking, and teaching.

U.K.-based Cottam, has become

one of the most important figures

in public service design and

innovation. With a PhD in social

sciences and a former life as an

urban poverty specialist at the

World Bank in Washington, she

researches the emotional, social,

and economic effects of design.

Through her current organization,

Participle, Cottam looks to tackle

some of society's biggest issues—ageing or education—and solve them through design. In 2005

she was named U.K. Designer of the Year by London's Design Museum for her work in public

service innovation.

Since 1994, Antonelli, has used the

pulpit of the Museum of Modern

Art in New York to preach her

ideas about design. Now the senior

curator in the department of

architecture and design, she has

overseen popular exhibitions that

have expanded everyday notions

of what design is. Given the

"Design Mind" prize at the 2006

National Design Awards in the U.S.,

Antonelli says her goal is "to insistently promote design's understanding, until its positive

influence on the world is fully acknowledged and exploited." Her next show, Talk To Me, will

delve into the worlds of information and communication design.

IDEO is probably the organization

most closely associated with

"design thinking," a practice that

spreads the tentacles and

processes of design beyond the

realm of products and objects into

unexpected industries and

contexts. As CEO and president of

the company, Brown, has also

become the movement's unofficial

spokesperson, talking up the power

of design to transform business—and the world—at events such as the World Economic Forum

in Davos, Switzerland. Working with clients such as Microsoft (MSFT), PepsiCo (PEP), and

Procter & Gamble (PG), Brown works at a high level within large multinational corporations to

promote the strategic power of design.

Recognizing the challenges of

introducing sustainable principles

to an industry that quite literally

thrives on producing more and

more, well, stuff, Casey, founded

the Designers Accord. It's a fluid,

global coalition of designers and

business leaders who are

committed to agreeing on and

implementing stringent yet

practical environmental design policies. Having honed her own design chops at companies such

as Pentagram, frog design, and IDEO, Casey now works as an independent consultant, advising

clients such as Naked Pizza on how, when, and why to use design appropriately and

responsibly.

As a Product Designer & Architect Ron Arad

combines playful forms and experiments with

advanced technologies. Ron Arad has

emerged as one of the most influential

designers of our time. Born in Tel Aviv, he

attended the Bezalel Academy of Art and

Design in Jerusalem between 1971–73 and

the Architectural Association in London from

1974–79 In 1989, with Caroline Thorman, he

founded Arad Associates, an architecture and

design firm, in London. He was Head of Design Products Department at the Royal College of Art

from 1997 to 2009. Arad made his name in the early 1980s as a self-taught designer-maker of

sculptural furniture and still works across both design and architecture.

Norman Foster is an architectural phenomenon; responsible for a dozen or more of the key buildings of the last 30 years, but also as the founder of perhaps the most financially successful architectural practice of modern times. Foster gained an internship at a local architect's office before submitting a portfolio and winning a place at the University 0f Manchester, School Of Architecture. He subsequently won a scholarship to study at the Yale School of Architecture in the United States of America. His breakthrough building was arguably the Willis Building in Ipswich in 1975 and he has since designed landmark structures such as Wembley Stadium and The Gherkin. He is one of Britain's most prolific architects of his generation. In 1999 he was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize, often referred to as the Nobel Prize of architecture and In 2009 Foster was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award in the Arts category.

Achille Castiglioni was born in Milan and studied architecture at the Politecnico di Milano University and set up a design office in 1944 with his brothers, Livio Castiglioni and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni. In 1956, Castiglioni founded the Associazione per il Disegno Industriale (Association for Industrial Design, ADI). Castiglioni taught for many years, first at the Politecnico di Torino. In 1969 and later he led a class in Industrial Design at the faculty of Architecture at Politecnico di Milano, teaching several thousand students. He is one of the most important industrial designers of the 20th century; Achille Castiglioni produced more than 150 products during his career and forged enduring relationships with Italian manufacturers such as Flos in lighting, Zanotta in furniture and Alessi in home products.

Born in Munich in 1965, Konstantin Grcic studied carpentry and cabinet-making at Parnham College in Dorset before enrolling on the masters’ course in furniture design at the Royal College of Art in London. After graduating in 1990 he worked for a year in Jasper Morrison’s studio before returning to Munich to open his own practice. Grcic has since designed furniture and products for companies including Authentics, Cappellini, Flos, Iittala, Lamy, Magis, Moroso and Muji, as well as Krups. By defining function in human terms, Konstantin has developed a design language that combines formal rigour with subtle humour in the design of products and furniture.

Jasper Morrison is one of today’s most influential industrial designers. He is renowned for his ascetically elegant, quietly humorous style and has designed everything from a tray-table to a tram system. Morrison was born in London, England. He was educated at Bryanston School. He received a Bachelor of Design degree from Kingston Polytechnic Design School in 1982 and a Masters degree in Design from the Royal College of Art, London, in 1985. He also studied at the Berlin University of the Arts, formerly the Hochschule der Künste (HdK). In March 2007, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in design from Kingston University. He (and Jasper Morrison Ltd) has worked for Olivetti, Alessi, Alias, Cappellini, FLOS, FSB, MAGIS, Rosenthal, Rowenta, SCP & Vitra.

He attended Wilson's School in Wallington and studied three dimensional design at Kingston University. He completed his studies at the Royal College of Art in London in 2000 with an MA in Design Products. He works across many disciplines in art and design from graphics to clothing to vehicles. Anson runs his own design practice and is a Senior Lecturer in Design at Kingston University in South West London. He is one of the new generation of British product designers for whom narrative is an increasingly important element in their work, Pascal combines industrial production and improvisation to create products and furniture that tell a story while fulfilling their function.

Mathias Bengtsson has always described himself as a designer, but his works are closer to fine art than to traditional industrial design. The majority of his works are unique or created as editions, requiring both high-tech production facilities and labour-intensive processes. Museums on both sides of the Atlantic have been quick to acquire Bengtsson’s works, and his pieces have entered the permanent collections of institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Contemporary Art Museum Houston, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and Manchester Art Gallery. Born in Copenhagen in 1971, Bengtsson studied furniture design at the Danish Design School before moving to London to study at the Royal College of Art. After graduating in 1999, he shared a studio with a fellow RCA student, Sam Buxton, where they worked together as Design Laboratory.

Born in London in 1972, Buxton studied furniture design at Middlesex University before starting at the RCA in 1997. After graduation he shared a studio – Design Laboratory – with a fellow RCA graduate, the Danish designer Mathias Bengtsson. Now working on his own, Buxton has developed commercial projects for Kenzo, Habitat and Eurolounge as well as the burgeoning MIKRO-Man collection which is now expanding into environments with a stainless steel fold-up MIKRO-House. He was one of the four designers shortlisted for the Design Museum's Designer of the Year award in 2004. From the MIKRO series of fold-up sculptures to his electroluminesent tables and clocks, the work of the British product designer SAM BUXTON is dominated by his experiments with advanced materials and technologies.

Dutch-born Sarah van Gameren graduated from the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands in 2004. She then moved to London to study Design at the Royal College of Art, where she became Master of Art in 2007. At the RCA she focused her research on design as a tool or machine, and was introduced to performance in collaboration with Rowan Mersh with whom she presented Chain Reaction I in 2006. She has since exhibited at the Milan Furniture Fair and her Fish-light was short-listed for the Artemide Tasklight competition in 2007. Sarah van Gameren explores issues of mass production, consumption and accidental aesthetics within design. Slowing down the production process, her Big Dipper reveals the product’s lifecycle. Van Gameren uncovers the true value of design through this grand gesture.