Now I’ve got some catching up to do on this blog so here is some other stuff I want you to take a look at.
First of all, industrial design engineering at the Delft University of Technology is counted among the best design schools in the world by business week. Plus there is explicit mention of the strategic poduct design master where I work one day a week. Check it out here

There is more press coverage of our strategic product design master in the Design Management Review. Based on a nice article on our school in the latest DMR issue by my colleague professor Jan Buijs the editor, Thomas Walton, comments: “Today, its Master of Strategic Product Design program is a more specialized design management opportunity created to give professionals the skills to create sustainable and commercially successful products and services in an internationally competitive marketplace … Since 2003, enrollment has grown from 23 to 75 students, and an increasing percentage of alumni are in managerial and executive positions. Clearly, the curriculum at Delft reconfirms global enthusiasm for training in design management.”

My new students in the Brand&Product Strategy course I teach (88 of them, about 15 nationalities) have Kathryn Best’s Design Management as compulsory reading. I think it is a great book, covering design management in a very fresh and inspiring way. It manages to showcast the breadth of our profession without falling in the trap of connecting everything to everything else. And it doesn’t flirt with the ‘management’ side of design management too much. It’s a designer’s book. It really is a very unpretentious little gem of design management literature.

Then zilverinnovation.com is finally on line, soon to be redesigned but at least giving you a hint of what we’re up to. Andre Weenink has finished his graduation project on making brands inspiring and usable for the design function, and is now fully focussed on Booreiland, his own design agency. They are -as we speak- developing zilver’s new corporate identity. In august Christa van Gessel joined Zilver and its great to have her as a colleague. She graduated at Philips on techniques to help researchers and engineers generate end-user insights, and her skills in this area are most inspiring.

Finally, I want you to check out this site, and hopefully you’re as amazed and thrilled as I was when I first saw it. Still am for that matter, everytime I sit back and browse through it when I have 5 minutes to spare. I think it is just completely brilliant in every sense. It is web 2.0 with feelin’ for those of you antique enough to be familiar with arlo guthrie’s alice’s restaurant.