Stefano Marzano

Stefano Marzano is CEO and Chief Creative Director, Philips Design, the international in-house design group at Philips responsible for all design work within the company.

Both Stefano Marzano and Philips Design are widely recognized as being in the forefront of the design profession.

Stefano is a regular speaker at international design, business and technology conferences, at which he addresses current and emerging issues in design and design management. He has also published widely on design topics, being the author or editor of a number of books describing the work of Philips Design and the humanistic philosophy on which it is based. These books include Television at the Crossroads (1994), Vision of the Future (1996), Creating Value by Design: Thoughts and Facts (1998), City, People, Light (1997), Past Tense, Future Sense: Competing through Creativity – 80 Years of Design at Philips (2005), and (with Emile Aarts) The New Everyday: Views on Ambient Intelligence (2003).

In addition to his responsibilities at Philips, Stefano takes a keen interest in design education. For many years (until 1998), he was Professor at the Domus Academy in Milan (Italy) and a member of the Academy's Strategic Board, and in 1999-2001 he was Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Design of the Milan Polytechnic Institute. He was instrumental in helping to set up the Faculty of Industrial Design at the Technical University in Eindhoven (The Netherlands), where he currently chairs the Supervisory Board. He is also on the Advisory Council of the Design Management Institute (Boston, USA), Design London (which unifies the Royal college of Art, the Imperial College London and the Imperial's Tanaka Business School). He has received honorary Doctorates in Design, Honoris Causa, from the University of La Sapienze, (Rome, Italy) and the Polytechnic University of Hong Kong. He is a regular juror for international design competitions.

Stefano joined Philips in 1973, working on projects with the Major Domestic Appliances division in Italy, later moving in 1978 to the Netherlands, where he worked as design leader for data systems and telecommunications products. He returned to Italy in 1982 to direct the Philips-Ire Design Centre (Major Domestic Appliances). In 1989, he became Vice-President of Corporate Industrial Design for Whirlpool International, a joint venture between Whirlpool and Philips. Stefano took up his present position at Philips Design in 1991. Stefano was born in Varese, Italy, in 1950, and graduated from the Milan Polytechnic Institute with a doctorate in Architecture.