About the Author

Mauro grew up in Varese, in the north of Italy, in a simple family that valued culture and kindness above everything else. Fame and wealth weren’t seen by Mauro’s parents as an aspiration for their son, but as a potential threat to one’s moral compass. The family’s passions were art and literature, and Mauro was raised surrounded by paintings and poems, playing with brushes and notebooks. Fast forward to forty-seven years later: Mauro, with his wife, Carlotta, and their daughter, Beatrice, now divides his time between his apartment in Manhattan and his house in the Hamptons. He is the first-ever chief design officer of PepsiCo, the food and beverage multinational corporation, and prior to that he was the first-ever chief design officer of 3M, another multinational company, this time in the world of science and technology. In the past two decades he built from scratch the entire design capability of both enterprises. Today he leads hundreds of people, based in more than fifteen locations around the world, and with them he drives a new and unique approach to innovation and branding—human-centered and design-driven.

Over the years, he has received a long list of honors and recognitions. Among them, the president of the Italian Republic recognized him with knighthood (Cavaliere dell’Ordine della Stella d’Italia); Fortune magazine listed him as one of the “40 under 40,” the magazine’s list of “the business’s hottest rising stars”—the only designer included that year; Ad Age named him in its “Creativity 50,” its list of the “world’s most influential creative personalities”; Fast Company recognized him as one of the “50 Most Influential Designers in America,” “Master of Design,” and one of the “Most Creative People in Business”; Innovation Leader in Boston named him as one of the “Top 25 Most Influential Innovators”; Thomas Jefferson University of Philadelphia named him “Innovator of the Year”; and Pentawards in London recognized him with its Visionary Award. The World HR Forum in Mumbai presented him with its Award for Leadership and Innovation; the newspaper Il Giornale named him as “one of the ten Italians who will change the world”; and the Wall Street Journal called him “the man putting 3M on the design map.” In his professional career, he has been granted forty-seven patents in his name.

In the past twenty years, Mauro has taken his message about human-centered and design-driven innovation to the stages of hundreds of conferences in every region of the world. On many of these occasions, the hosts enjoyed introducing him with a touch of color, reminding the audience that on top of his business and design achievements, Mauro was also listed as one of the “30 Best Dressed Men” of his country by GQ Italy.

Regardless of this incredible journey, though, Mauro still cherishes in his heart, today, those values of culture and kindness that his parents taught him a long time ago, in a remote town in the north of Italy. And those values permeate this book, which he started writing more than thirty years ago, noting thoughts and ideas, theories and emotions, during his journey along the winding paths of life. He always knew that he wanted to write a book: writing, storytelling and sharing have always been passions of his, along with drawing and photography. And so, he started taking notes, composed of words, pictures, and sketches.

His obsession with the creation of value for humanity, from people to people, is at the core of everything he does. From his podcast In Your Shoes—with Mauro Porcini, to his role as a host of America by Design, airing on CBS and Amazon Prime Video, he doesn’t miss an opportunity to deliver this message.

His professional journey has taken different and exciting turns. Before landing in 3M in Minnesota, and then at PepsiCo in New York, he earned a master’s degree in design at the unveristy Politecnico of Milan with a thesis on wearable technologies that was selected to be showcased at the Louvre Museum in France and at the Seoul Art Center in South Korea. That project brought him to Philips Design, where he stayed for about a year. He left only to follow a bigger dream, that of creating his own agency with the celebrity producer and music star Claudio Cecchetto, working on innovation at the crossroads of digital media and entertainment.

This diversity of experiences and industries has given Mauro the holistic and humanistic approach to design, innovation, and business that he celebrates in every page of this book.