As an award-winning innovation leader and the first Chief Design Officer of three global corporations — in technology (Samsung), food & beverage (PepsiCo), and science (3M) — Mauro Porcini has spent over 25 years building human-centered, design-driven cultures of innovation. He has created global design capabilities from scratch, recruiting and developing hundreds of creative talents across every region of the world.

With his teams, Mauro has led a new approach to innovation — one that impacts both new product development and brand evolution across every touchpoint: packaging, retail, digital, architecture, events, fashion, and more. But for Mauro, human-centered innovation isn’t just about the people we design for — it’s about the people doing the designing.

That’s why he looks for what he calls unicorns: people who are “in love with people.” Innovators who have the creative fire to build meaningful solutions for real human beings — and who lead with kindness, optimism, and humility. These aren’t traits typically found on résumés, but they’re at the heart of what drives breakthrough innovation in complex organizations.

In this keynote, Mauro shares how he:

– Finds and develops creative talent with rare emotional intelligence

– Builds innovation cultures inside large, traditional organizations

– Uses design thinking as a strategic framework across all levels of business

– Creates alignment through a shared, human-centered mindset that fuels growth

This is more than a talk about design — it’s a blueprint for building companies that truly put people first.