Mauro Porcini loves surprising the board room

Mauro Porcini became the world’s first chief design officer at 3M, before taking the role at PepsiCo and, now, Samsung. But despite defining what it means for a designer to take a seat in the C-suite, he admits that, for a few decades now, he’s ceased to fit anywhere perfectly. 

“Designers see me as a business person. The business people see me as a designer. I’m there in the middle between the two worlds, like I’m Italian and American. I’m both of them,” laments Porcini, before flipping this self-critique on its head.