2021 IDC Design Symposium: Keynote

IDC is excited to welcome Bruce Mau as the keynote speaker at this year’s symposium focused on Building Resilience through Empathy.

Bruce Mau is the co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in Chicago.

A serial entrepreneur since the age of nine, Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas. He founded the Institute without Boundaries, a purpose-driven postgraduate design program at George Brown College in Toronto, and it is there that he and his students co-created the groundbreaking exhibition and best-selling book, Massive Change. Mau’s “Incomplete Manifesto for Growth,” a 43-point declaration on sustaining a creative life written in 1998, has been translated into 15 languages and has spawned a multitude of creative interpretations that are widely shared on the internet to this day.

Mau practices a life-centered design approach to help his clients envision and articulate their purpose and future. Across thirty years of design innovation, he has collaborated with leading brands, companies, organizations, heads of state, entrepreneurs, renowned artists, and fellow optimists to create positive change and strategic impact across a broad spectrum of projects.

When everything is connected to everything else, for better or worse, everything matters. 

– Bruce Mau

Mau evolved a unique design methodology of 24 massive change design principles – MC24 – that can be applied to inspire solutions to challenges in any field or environment at every scale. The MC24 principles underpin all Mau’s work — from designing carpets to cities, books to new media, global brands to cultural institutions, and social movements to business transformation – and they are the subject of his latest book, Mau: MC24, Bruce Mau’s 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work.

Mau has served as a Visiting Professor at institutions worldwide including the Graduate Architecture and Urban Design, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn; the Getty Research Institute, California; and the Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing. He was named as the Cullinan Chair at Rice University and was conferred a Distinguished Fellowship at Northwestern University. Mau is the recipient of The Design Mind Award from the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum,
AIGA gold Medal, and six honorary degrees. He was named an Honorary Royal Designer for Industry by the RSA, London.

Mau’s work and life story are the subject of a feature-length documentary, “Mau,” which premiered in March 2021 at SXSW Film Festival Online.

Watch Mau’s keynote on October 14, 2021, at 12 p.m. ET.

Register Now