Position Summary:

Business Design Specialist - Shanghai

IDEO is looking for a business designer. This role requires a unique blend of real-world experience and theory, entrepreneurial zeal and boardroom polish. You will work as a member of IDEO’s interdisciplinary teams to create market-pacing offerings for clients. At IDEO we "think to build". This means understanding context, developing insight, exploring and defining opportunities, setting strategy, creating tangible design expressions, communicating vision, and helping our clients go to market. All of this is done in a human-centric way. Your role within the interdisciplinary team will vary from project to project. Example briefs/activities include:

• Design business models that enhance and extend consumer experiences.
• Help companies find top-line growth.
• Help clients develop new growth options within existing brands.
• Design compelling value propositions for customers and consumers.
• Design new products, services and consumer experiences that stretch and test a company’s capabilities.
• Design organizational structures and strategic assets to help companies be more innovative.
• Visit http://www.ideo.com/work/ to view featured work on our website.

Requirements

• We are looking for people with experience in business model design and analysis. Masters in business with an undergraduate degree in engineering or design is ideal.
• The candidate will work with, learn from and contribute to the global community of Business Designers at IDEO.
• Successful candidates will combine rigorous business acumen across all of the following areas along with world-class depth in one or two: Marketing (Product or Brand), Product Development, Organizational Behavior, Operations
• Candidates should have significant operational experience taking offerings to market, whether as an entrepreneur or intrapreneur, for the China market.
• Deep understanding of variances in ways of doing business in China, and ability to bridge the variance for IDEO and our Chinese clients.
• Minimum of 3-4 years of industry experience is required.
• Demonstrated mastery of the human-centric design process.
• Experience with diverse work cultures. Experience in multinational corporations a plus.
• Ability to work in an ambiguous and dynamic environment and comfortable with matrixed/non-hierarchical organizations.
• Ability to work in multidisciplinary design teams.
• Outstanding verbal and written communication skills in English and Mandarin/Simple Chinese.
• The ability to coach and teach designers about business.
• You must be willing to get your hands dirty.

About IDEO
IDEO is an internationally renowned innovation and design firm that uses a human-centered approach in design to help organizations create products, brands, services, environments and strategies. We help our clients identify new directions and offerings by designing for people’s latent needs, behaviors, and desires. As social issues enters the mind of the 21st century society, IDEO is integrating themes such as sustainability and social responsibility into our designs. A partial client list include: Eli Lilly, Hewlett Packard (HP), Intel, Marriott, McDonald’s, Microsoft, Nestle, Nissan, Nokia, Pepsico, Samsung, and SAP.

IDEO consists of design thinkers experts in the disciplines of design, engineering, social science, and business strategy. Our strength in innovation stems from our unique culture based on collaboration, diversity, curiosity, openness to ideas, and empathy that defines each of our eight locations: San Francisco, Palo Alto, Chicago, Boston, New York City, London, Munich, and Shanghai. Since 2005, the Boston Consulting Group has identified IDEO as one of the most innovative companies in the world, and a survey conducted by IMD, Egon Zehnder, and Fast Company placed IDEO fifth on a list of the most admired US innovators. Beginning in 1991, IDEO topped BusinessWeek’s list of design award winners for fourteen years straight. Other awards include nineteen Red Dot awards and more than fifteen iF Hanover awards.

To Apply
Please visit our website at http://www.ideo.com/culture/careers/ to submit your cover letter explaining why you are a good fit for this role, and a resume or curriculum vitae. You will favorably impress us by also attaching:
• description of a project where you used the human-centered design process to bring something new to the world
• your response to this exercise: find an environment where you can watch people going through daily life (such as a park, a restaurant, a transit station or vehicle etc.) Spend time observing activities and interactions, documenting what you notice (in photos or diagrams for instance) and share with us your thoughts about how people's experiences there could be enhanced, and what resulting opportunities there might be for a viable market offering.