In this second half of their conversation, host Jerry Cuomo and Phil Gilbert pick up where they left off—moving from the craft of design to the culture that makes design thrive.

Phil shares how his work at IBM revealed that the real challenge wasn’t design talent, but organizational mindset. He explains how he and his team turned culture change into a product—earning buy-in across 300,000 employees and proving that true transformation happens when people choose to adopt new ways of working.

They also discuss the creation of the IBM Garage, the power of design thinking at scale, and how these lessons inspired Phil’s new book, Irresistible Change: A Blueprint for Earning Buy-In and Breakout Success.

Key Takeaways from Part 2 (on Culture & Change):

1. From Design to Culture — Great design can’t flourish without a culture that values empathy, collaboration, and curiosity.
2. Culture as a Product — Phil treated culture change like a product launch: define the audience, prove value, and earn adoption.
3. Outcomes Over Inputs — Change succeeds when it’s tied to measurable outcomes, not training programs or slogans.
4. The IBM Garage — A model for co-creation that brings design thinking to life with real clients and teams.
5. Earning Buy-In — Sustainable transformation is built on trust, participation, and shared purpose—not mandates.

In essence, Part 2 shows how Phil applied design principles to reshape an entire organization, culminating in the lessons captured in Irresistible Change.

#WildDucksPodcast #PhilGilbert #DesignThinking #CorporateCulture #IrresistibleChange #JerryCuomo #Leadership #Innovation

In this first of a two-part conversation, host Jerry Cuomo sits down with Phil Gilbert — entrepreneur, design leader, and the mind behind IBM’s modern design movement.

Phil takes us back to his startup roots in the 1980s, when helping professionals adopt personal computers sparked a lifelong passion for design as a force for clarity and connection. Along the way, he reflects on the thinkers who influenced him — from Alan Cooper’s persona-based design to Richard Buchanan’s “Wicked Problems in Design Thinking.”

Phil reminded us that great design scales quality, solves real human problems, and sometimes means knowing when to break the mold. Whether designing products or the organizations that design great products, this formula has proven to be a winner.

Key Takeaways from Part 1 (on Design):

1. Design as a Way to Scale Quality — Design isn’t decoration; it’s a method for making complex systems more usable, reliable, and human-centered at scale.

2. The Alan Cooper Moment — Persona-based design reframed how to build products around real people, not requirements.

3. Wicked Problems, Not Simple Fixes — Inspired by Buchanan’s 1992 paper, Phil saw design thinking as a way to address messy, evolving challenges.

4. Design Beyond Products — The same mindset that shapes great software can redesign organizations and cultures through empathy and experimentation.

5. Breaking the Mold — From early PCs to the iPhone, Phil shows that great design sometimes means knowing when to break consistency to create transformation.

In essence, Part 1 traces Phil’s evolution from software builder to design thinker, showing how design became his lifelong tool for meaningful, human-centered change.

Stay tuned for Part 2, where Jerry and Phil continue the story — exploring how design principles shape companies and inspire Phil’s new book, Irresistible Change.

#WildDucksPodcast #PhilGilbert #DesignThinking #Innovation #IrresistibleChange #JerryCuomo

In this episode of Wild Ducks, Jerry reconnects with his first programming teacher, Brent Hailpern, to explore how a simple course on Karel the Robot sparked a lifelong passion for software. They reflect on the early days at IBM’s TJ Watson Research Center, the art of programming, and today’s rise of AI code assistants. Join them for a thoughtful and lively discussion on how the tools may change, but the core discipline of coding endures.