Don’t be afraid to dream big—you should always dream! If you don’t have a dream, you’ll never be able to make it come true!
Dream and then act!
There simply is no innovation
without risk
THE HUMAN SIDE
OF INNOVATION
THE POWER OF
PEOPLE IN LOVE
WITH PEOPLE
The author
Mauro Porcini is Samsung’s first-ever President & Chief Design Officer, a newly created role he assumed in April 2025.
He leads human-centered innovation through design at one of the world’s largest and most influential multinational corporations in consumer technology.
Mauro oversees a global team of 1,500 designers spanning Samsung’s three core business units—mobile, displays and TVs, and home appliances. These teams are based in Seoul, South Korea, with additional design hubs in Japan, China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Brazil, and India.
Before joining Samsung, Mauro served as the first Chief Design Officer at two other global, multi-billion-dollar companies: the tech giant 3M and the food and beverage powerhouse PepsiCo.
At PepsiCo, Mauro stepped into the newly created role in 2012, tasked with building a design culture and capability from the ground up. Based in New York City, he led a transformative approach to innovation by design across a portfolio of iconic brands, including Pepsi, Lay’s, Gatorade, Mountain Dew, SodaStream, Quaker, 7UP, Doritos, LIFEWTR, Bubly, Aquafina, Cheetos, Mirinda, amongst many others. His work spanned both physical and virtual expressions of the brand, encompassing product, packaging, retail experience, fashion and art collaborations, events, architecture, and digital media.
What began as a bold ambition evolved into a thriving global design organization: by the time he left in 2025 to join Samsung, PepsiCo Design had grown into a team of nearly 400 extraordinary designers across 19 cities worldwide. Together, they redefined the role of design within a global corporation—creating products, experiences, and narratives that touched billions of lives. Mauro also built a lasting culture of creativity, passion, and human-centered thinking, now deeply embedded within the fabric of PepsiCo.
Under his leadership, the team garnered more than 2,300 design and innovation awards, a testament not only to the impact of their work but also to the people behind it. In 2018, Fortune recognized PepsiCo on its “Driven by Design” list—one of only two food and beverage companies to earn the distinction.
Prior to PepsiCo, Mauro was the first-ever Chief Design Officer at 3M, where he led the design of innovative products and experiences across multiple business sectors while nurturing a design-driven culture within the global tech company. His teams in the U.S., Italy, China, and Japan earned numerous prestigious international awards.
He began his career at Philips Design and later co-founded his own design firm, Wisemad Srl, in Italy with renowned entertainment producer and music icon Claudio Cecchetto. His work in wearable technology has been exhibited at the Louvre in Paris and the Seoul Arts Center.
Mauro is also an accomplished author. In fall 2022, he released The Human Side of Innovation. The Power of People in Love with People (Berrett-Koehler), a book on innovation, design, and leadership. It won a Gold Medal at the Better Future – New York Design Awards and has since been translated into Chinese and Arabic. In 2021, he published L’Età dell’Eccellenza (Il Saggiatore), now in its fifth reprint. In 2023, he co-authored Good Design is for Everyone (Rizzoli) with his PepsiCo design team.
He has served on the boards of multiple organizations and was President of the Board of the Politecnico di Milano Foundation in the U.S. (Fellows of Politecnico) from 2022 until his move to South Korea in 2025.
Mauro also created and hosted the podcast In your shoes — with Mauro Porcini, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube, where he interviewed creative leaders from around the globe. He has been a recurring judge and presenter on the CBS and Amazon Prime Video series New York by Design and America by Design.
A passionate lover of design and fashion—but not addicted to it—Mauro owns more than 350 pairs of shoes. He holds dual citizenship (Italy and the U.S.) and currently resides in Seoul, South Korea, with his wife Carlotta, their children Beatrice and Leonardo, and their three Pomeranians—Leone, Bella, and Lupo.
The award-winning designer reveals the secret to creating life-changing innovation: putting human needs and wants at the center of any design process.
“Innovation is an act of love — or at least it should be. Always. It is a gesture of empathy, respect, generosity, of one human being’s devotion to another,” writes Mauro Porcini at the beginning of this extraordinary book.
It is in part a memoir by one of the world’s leading designer — the first chief design officer at 3M, PepsiCo and Samsung. But even more, it is a manifesto for a genuine, authentic, and deeply humanistic approach to innovation, one that aims to create personal and social value first and financial and economic value afterward.
In every industry, globalization and new technologies have lowered the traditional barriers to entry like never before. Either you design extraordinary and innovative products, brands, and experiences or somebody will beat you to it and ultimately take your place. Porcini shows, in example after example and story after story, that the key to real, world-changing innovation is to put people first – not only the people we innovate for but also the people who lead the innovation process.
Putting people first requires a special type of person, what Porcini calls unicorns: people who are in love with people, who have a genuine fire in them to create meaningful solutions for actual human beings. In this book, he describes them, celebrates them, and details their superpowers so you can find them, hire them, grow them, and retain them. Some of these qualities you might expect – the ability to dream and think big combined with the ability to execute and make things happen. But when was the last time you heard an executive ask prospective hires if they were kind or optimistic, curious or humble?
Porcini uses his journey across startups and multinational corporations, through successes and failures, to create a handbook for modern innovators.
We must be
students
of
life,
students
for
life.
From the first chapter of the book
INNOVATION IS AN ACT OF LOVE
“Innovation is an act of love—or at least it should be. Always. It is a gesture of empathy, respect, generosity, of one human being’s devotion to another. This is the innovation that I hope for.
This is the innovation that I want for my children and their children, for the society of today and of tomorrow. This is the very best innovation: meaningful, useful, beautiful, and sustainable innovation, the kind that continues to improve the status quo, now and for always.
This is the innovation that the new world we are living in requires. Not only because it is the right thing to do, ethically speaking—this should be the first and final word in the matter, though it often isn’t. But also because, at last, in our global, technological, and digital society, ethical goals are increasingly aligning with business goals for both enterprises and individuals. Innovation as an act of love is today (also) becoming good business!
It has not always been this way, of course. We are surrounded by thousands of products, brands, and services that represent the outcomes of a very different kind of logic. Yet today, matters are changing. There is no alternative. This is a real historical turning point, one that needs to be understood, celebrated, and accelerated…”
Everything that surrounds us, and that hasn’t been created by Mother Nature, has been imagined, thought up, designed, and built by a human being, by a designer, an innovator, an entrepreneur.
Every single thing.
From the foreword of Ramon Laguarta, Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo
“…In this book, Mauro goes into depth about the mindset and strategies he has used to champion a more people-focused approach to innovation. It is a fascinating study of what it takes to drive change at the team and organizational levels. And it offers a blueprint for anyone who aspires to build companies and brands while growing as a leader—and as a human being…”
From the foreword of Indra Nooyi, Former Chairman and CEO of Pepsico
“…The first time I met Mauro, I knew he was a complete original—one of one.
And his influence on PepsiCo has been singular.
I like to think of PepsiCo’s history as unfolding in two stages: Before Mauro and After Mauro…”
“Mauro has written a fascinating book about entrepreneurs who have the disposition and skills to innovate.
But there is more to innovation success than being entrepreneurial.
The social skills of empathy, curiosity, attentiveness, optimism, and resilience will make
a critical contribution to whether the innovation wins of fails”
– PHILIP KOTLER, Professor Emeritus of Marketing, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
“Get ready for a powerful journey inside the unique mind of Mauro Porcini,
full of innovation frameworks, stories, and one-of-a-kind insights
for business leaders, designers, and students alike”
– JOE GEBBIA, cofounder of Airbnb and Chairperson, Airbnb.org
“Mauro Porcini reveals in this book the unique combination of rigorous research, focus, sensitivity, curiosity, collaboration, and passion that is at the basis of a dream as ancient as his practice – producing good design for all. Just as he was able to inspire a trailblazing CEO, as well as a massive global company and its billions-strong clientele as a consequence, Mauro now inspires us all with his passion and endless talent as a designer and as a raconteur.”
– PAOLA ANTONELLI, Senior Curator, Architecture and Design, and Director, Research and Development, The Museum of Modern Art
“Mauro Porcini explores the universal truth
that innovation is by, with, and for people.
He delivers it with a unique and provocative voice that shows
how each of us puts our own stamp on the creative process.”
– TIM BROWN, Chair, IDEO, and author of Change by Design
“At long last, we have a real definition of a unicorn. Mauro Porcini’s glorious book deconstructs the true nature of innovation and reveals how to create meaning with craft, courage, intelligence, and ingenuity.”
– DEBBIE MILLMAN, designer; author; host of the Design Matters podcast; Chair, MPS Branding Department, School of Visual Arts; and Editorial Director, Printmag.com
“A pathbreaking leader shares wisdom on how empathy
and a deep love for people is at the heart of big, bold innovation.”
– LAXMAN NARASIMHAN, CEO, Starbucks, and former CEO, Reckitt Benckiser
“From the first time I met Mauro, I knew he was a special leader.
While his eye for design is exceptional, his eye for talent is what sets him apart.
He invests the time to get to know his team, understand them, mentor them,
inspire them, and grow them as leaders. I applaud Mauro for sharing his story!”
– BRIAN CORNELL, CEO, Target Corporation
The quality of the question is fundamental: far too often, people generate a whole set of correct answers for a whole set of wrong questions.
And too often, people forget to question the validity of their questions, finding comfort instead in the correctness of their answers.
Available from November 1, 2022
Order on:
Other books:
L’età dell’eccellenza (il Saggiatore, 2021)
Innovazione e creatività per costruire un mondo migliore