Naomi Gornick - biography

Naomi Gornick is a Design Management consultant specialising in curriculum development in higher education and advanced training programmes for in-house and consultant designers. She is currently advising a new Masters programme at Central St Martins, University of the Arts, London and works with in-house design teams in Nokia, UK and Helsinki, and the European HQ of Procter and Gamble, Geneva as well as Alloy product designers in the UK. From 1989 to 2001 she initiated and developed post-graduate programmes at the Royal College of Art (MA Design Management) and Brunel University (MA Design, Strategy and Innovation). The aim has been to extend the boundaries of traditional design education and to create design-based professionals with advanced understanding of key contextual and global issues as well as creativity and innovation processes in industrial organisations. Many graduates from her programmes have taken up senior management positions in UK and international companies.

As Director of the Masters Degree programme, Design, Strategy and Innovation, in the Brunel Design Department, Naomi Gornick developed collaborative links with over 40 industrial companies through research-based audits and internships. The programme received sponsorship from British Airways and the Rover Group.

Naomi Gornick is Honorary Professor of the University of Dundee. She lectures on design management in the UK as well as at conferences in the UK, US and Europe. In May 2007, she organised the symposium “Metamorphosis of Design Management” at the London College of Communication bringing together participants from design education and consultancy, design research and industry representatives. Naomi Gornick has also has been involved in the development of several radically new design programmes at London Institute (now University of the Arts, London), Middlesex University, de Montfort University and at Kingston and Regents’ Business Schools. She works with Goldsmiths College on the m21 project as a member of the research team. Her papers are published in Design Management Review (formerly Design Management Journal)(USA), Designjournalen (Sweden) and Innovation (Quarterly of the Industrial Designers Society of America) as well as The Designer and DesignWeek? in the UK.

Naomi Gornick is Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Open University and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Chartered Society of Designers. In March 2003, she was the first international member of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) to Chair the jury for IDEA Excellence Awards in Washington DC, USA.