PLEASE NOTE CHANGE OF VENUE
EVENT WILL NOW BE AT IDENTICA,
247 TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD
LONDON W1T 7QX 

Is your design business strategic?

Long-term champion of design in industry and business-to-business, Bonnie Dean questions whether designers know their strategic potential. Bonnie chairs the Designing Demand Advisory Board and is a Council Member of the Design Council. Services to business is a sector relatively untapped in the UK by designers and it’s where opportunity lies.

Bonnie has extensive managerial and board-level experience in manufacturing and engineering. She says that the value designers bring to businesses is often not fully recognised – by designers, let alone potential clients. Strategic designers ask the right questions, they see through the complexities and isolate the real problems, they recognise the unspoken, simplify the need and prioritise what to work on first.

This is music to our ears. Designers have huge potential to help business-to-business enterprises to innovate. This breakfast is about focusing on your innate strategic abilities – and speaking the language of business with confidence.

Join us in our discussion with Bonnie Dean.

June 24 breakfast 

'Sure you're not selling yourself short?' 

With design entrepreneur – turned mentor, Liz Wren

Liz Wren, former business principal at Wren & Rowe and owner of montoring and coaching consultancy Through the Forest, will pick up on May’s breakfast theme and look at how you can realise your true value to clients. She will be joined by two design business leaders who are successfully combining creativity with entrepreneurship. This breakfast is on Thursday 24 June.

Designer Breakfasts' discount at Vintage at Goodwood

VINTAGE AT GOODWOOD, a new summer festival, the brainchild of Wayne and Gerardine Hemingway, celebrating five decades of British Cool, is offering Designer Breakfasters the chance to take advantage of a 10% discount on admission tickets available until the 9th of May 2010.  Simply enter the code (VINDB10) and away you go!  To find out more visit www.vintageatgoodwood.com 

Future events in 2010

As well as involving our network of small design businesses, we will be hearing from key figures in design – around our focus of entrepreneurship, co-ownership and co-creation and selling creativity not outputs. 

Later this year, we look forward to hearing from some of the most influential thinkers and practitioners including Glenn Tutsell of The Brand Union (15 July), Sebastian Conran (23 September) and Bonnie Dean, senior adviser to the Quantum Property Partnership, a Trustee of the Design Council and passionate advocate of strategic design and its role in linking new technologies to end users and customers. 

Missed previous Designer Breakfasts? Hear our podcasts.

You can catch up with the thoughts of Sir George Cox, Mat Hunter, Michael Peters, Ben Terrett, Jonathan Porritt, Michael Woolf and others at http://designerbreakfasts.net/node/56. Designer Breakfasts are now recording these events and you can hear our podcasts online.

Co-creating Designer Breakfasts with our network

Designer Breakfast welcomes suggestions and collaborations with designers in our network. If you would like to co-curate a breakfast with us, can suggest prospective sponsors or would like to take part in our regular ‘ask the network’ meetings, contact Mike Abrahams or Amanda Tatham. 

Got a good story?

If you’ve a piece of news that you’d like to share with the rest of the network, let us know. We’ll include your contributions on our next newsletter. Mail us: events@designerbreakfasts.net 

Designer Breakfasts is the hub for people who own or work in small creative businesses. It stages monthly events around the themes of entrepreneurship, co-ownership and co-creation (new models of engagement), selling creative thinking not just outputs and taking designers' vision to SMEs. Designer Breakfasts was established in 2005 by design businesses Abrahams and Tatham Design, and communications specialists The Ministry of Love. Visit www.designerbreakfasts.net for more information.