David Walker is an architect, designer, and specialist in innovation and new product development. Most of his professional work has been in the realm of building bridges between two tribes – managers and designers. While a fair proportion of his work has been as a professional consultant and writer on design and innovation, he is convinced of the prime importance of visual thinking and visual communication. Verbal analysis of design can only set up frameworks; real quality and know how is embedded in visually led processes.
David has a first career as an architect in the UK (mainly in social housing) He worked for private practices (Tom Hancock. Max Lock) local government (Lambeth Council) and National government (DoE).
David moved to the Open University as a member of the Faculty of Technology in 1979. There he was course team chair of a pioneering course Design; Processes and Products and a lead author on both Design and Innovation, and the Technology Foundation course.
Within the Open Business School he was chairman of Managing Design and was lead author of Creative Management for the OU MBA. He is a co founder of DIG Design Innovation Group; Open University and UMIST.
Both of these courses are thought to be benchmark courses within the OU. He is the author of around 50 OU units (50 page monographs with support materials). While at the OU he constructed and delivered, the MA in Design Management at the Royal College of Art (RCA) over the period 1989 –1992.
Publications outside the OU include Managing Innovation Sage (with Jane Henry) and Creativity for Engineers Woodhead (with Barry Dagger).
David has lived and worked for extended periods abroad: in Boston as Research Fellow at the DMI, and in Toulon, Hong Kong, Sydney and Auckland. In Australasia he has co-constructed and variously contributed to post–graduate programmes in Design Management and Innovation. In the UK he was the founder and main editor of the cross disciplinary Journal co–design.
David Walker is working with alt.group NZ to support the Better by Design Campaign which is funded by NZTE the New Zealand equivalent of BERR. Also see their excellent CEO Summit on sustainability: featuring…Michale Braungart, Janine Benyus, Ray Anderson and Alex Steffen.
Check out David Walker’s piece on Sustainable Innovation here on the BBD site.