Interview by Pavlos Amperiadis

Mauro Porcini is PepsiCo’s first ever Chief Design Officer and the 2022 Laureate of The American Prize for Design. Given in conjunction with The Chicago Athenaeum’s historic Good Design Awards, The American Prize for Design honors a specific design practitioner with the highest public accolade for producing design that promotes design excellence, innovation, and lasting design.

He joined the food & beverage corporation in 2012 and in said role he is infusing design thinking into PepsiCo’s culture and is leading a new approach to innovation by design that impacts the company’s product platforms and brands, which include Pepsi, Lay’s, Mountain Dew, Gatorade, Sodastream, Doritos, Lifewtr, bubly, Aquafina, Cheetos, Quaker, 7Up, Mirinda, amongst many others. 

His focus extends from physical to virtual expressions of the brands, including product, packaging, events, advertising, fashion and art collaborations, retail activation, architecture, and digital media. He leads teams based in New York City, Purchase, Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, Orlando, Miami, London, Dublin, Moscow, Il Cairo, New Delhi, Shanghai, Bangkok, Mexico City, Sao Paulo and Cape Town.

In this conversation with Pavlos Amperiadis, Publisher of Global Design News, Mauro explains his thinking behind his new book ‘The Human Side of Innovation: The Power of People in Love with People’ and unveils secrets on human-centricity, innovation, and design thinking.

A “unicorn” combines vision, curiosity, and innovative thinking with respect, kindness, and optimism

GDN: Hi Mauro, is this your home office? Because it looks magnificent!

Mauro: Yes, this is my home workspace in New York, and we are so happy about the weather being sunny here in November.

But should we be happy or alarmed about it?

GDN: Mauro, would you be able to explain to our readers the aim of your latest publication ‘Human Side of Innovation: The Power of People in Love with People? ‘

Mauro: I have always been interested in philosophy, literature, and writing. It felt that now it is the right time for me mentally to sit down and write with all my heart and not feeling that I need to do it with a deadline.

In reality, the concept and ideas have been circulating in my mind for years and I have been designing the structure of it the last three years.

I didn’t want it to be an endorsement or a milestone of my career but rather a truthful exploration of my ideas that can help people in the design profession and outside.

The aim is to express the idea of “people in love with people” and how innovation is deeply rooted in this idea. It has also been the right time for me because of emotional stability with my wife Carlotta and our family. It felt like I finally have enough clarity to write a book now.

In school I would like my son to have classes on kindness, on optimism, on respect; to be taught to be curious but also empathetic

GDN: How important is it to localize the design process to specific cultures internationally and celebrate them?

Mauro: This is what we call the “Glocal Approach” in PepsiCo, in our attempt to combine the global reach of our organization and the respect for local cultures globally.

A characteristic example is when I designed the Lay’s campaign to localize the packages but also flavors to be specially influenced by different cultures of the world.

For example, we had wasabi flavor and we did not aim it solely to the Japanese customers but also for Japanese minorities that live in all parts of the world.

Same thing, we did with a lot of different cultures and minorities worldwide to give them a voice.

There was this article I read this morning in The Economist where at some point Italy was portrayed in a most stereotypical way about South European politics compared to British politics. This is exactly what we do differently in PepsiCo when we approach different cultures.

The only real term is people. There are no consumers or users or customers or clients but people, human beings

GDN: At one point in the book, you mention: “taking the user by the hand, that same person that the business world loves to call the consumer.”
What do you consider to be the difference between user and consumer and is it a linguistic difference or essential?

Mauro: The only real term is people. There are no consumers or users or customers or clients but people, human beings.

What in the business world is called ‘consumer’ refers to a non-sustainable model of people consuming endlessly and results in negative connotations.

On the other hand, the ‘user’ exists as a second stage when a person makes good use of a product and enjoys the design and the result. When the value of a product takes place.

The person, as the last phase, is when, as a designer, I see how a product can really create happiness for somebody. How it can add real value to their lives.

GDN: “Kindness in the business world.” Is this possible?

Mauro: Design thinking and practicing are humancentric, should be humancentric. When I started for example working at 3M, many a project was failing as obsolete practices were implemented into certain occasions.

My approach as Chief Design Officer in the corporations that I have worked with, from the start has been to focus on the people and to establish non-toxic or competitive relationships between them; to establish kindness as a virtue in the team.

From experience I have witnessed many roadblocks in the productivity of companies because lack of kindness results into lack of teamwork. There is an older view in managing that implementing competitive feelings between employees makes them more productive, but no trust means no productivity and no progress.

In difficult times and situations, you need people you trust next to you in order to help you overcome a situation. I’ve had that happening in my life and along with time, the second most important thing has been loving friends and colleagues who supported me through comfort and high spirits.

We cannot afford drama in a company that looks towards maximizing its creativity and productivity, a corporation that looks toward the future.

Of course, this is not the only necessity in leading a team; you need vision, strategy, speed, resilience, the ability to dream and if you combine the above with kindness, then you can reach excellence.

This is what we call the “Glocal Approach” in PepsiCo, in our attempt to combine the global reach of our organization and the respect for local cultures globally

GDN: “The Unicorn” is a central idea in the book. Would you be able to share with our readers in short, the characteristics of the unicorn in innovation and design? Are “unicorns” born or they can be created?

Mauro: Everything is designed, either by mother nature or by human design.

The concept of the “unicorn” is a humancentric conceptual design that combines different virtues for a person to acquire in order to be happier, more productive and more successful.

The characteristics of a “unicorn” combine vision with curiosity, innovative thinking, respect, kindness, and optimism.

Even if sometimes people think that these are values that you either have or not, this is not the truth.

It is our responsibility to educate our children into acquiring these elements in their education.

In school I would like my son to have classes on kindness, on optimism, on respect; to be taught to be curious but also empathetic.

GDN: Can you share with our readers new projects and new initiatives that you are working on?

What I would like to share is an example of a holistic approach on design thinking that circulates around four pillars: sustainability, personality, technology, and customization.

If you think like a unicorn and approach a design holistically, you can unlock incredible possibilities.

A project that we are working on and is an excellent example of what I am describing is a new smart reusable bottle in PepsiCo that has a vast variety of features to make the life of the person using it, of the end-user, easier and happier. For example, it can calculate the nutrients of the bottle’s drink like calcium and magnesium and provide to the person information that makes the reusable so worthy to use that there is no need to use non-reusable plastic cups or bottles.

The current project is sustainable, it makes excellent use of technology to achieve its features, it can be customized and personalized, and most of all, it helps people and creates real value for the person that will buy the product.

Photographs Courtesy of PepsiCo and Mauro Porcini