Mike Milley is the Director of the Foresight and Innovation Department for BMW Designworks. He leads the innovation consulting practice for Designworks. For those of you who do not know, BMW Designworks is an insight driven design and research firm with an expertise in mobility (automotive and aerospace). Design works being a fully owned subsidiary of BMW, Mike spends about half of his time working on BMW Group programs and the other have with external clients across a wide range of industries.

Mike is an expert in taking the complexities of human nature and boiling peoples actions, drivers, and desires into clear understandable insights that make creating products or services much easier and effective. He directs a team of strategists, futurists, business consultants and material innovation experts who lead programs for some of the most renown brands in the world.

His experience is immense and has a diverse background and prior to design works was the Global director at Samsung’s Lifestyle research lab in Palo Alto. Beyond being incredibly talented he is a pleasure to work with and I continually learn a lot from him each time we work on a project together.

In this episode:

We cover a lot in this episode from the two key trends driving connectivity in travel, some brand experience opportunities for airlines, what he would like to see change in the mobility industry and even how he likes his Korean Bim Bap!

  Show notes:

• How mike learned the big picture is very important. [4:12]
• The importance of Why and wow to ask the right questions when you start an innovation program [5:18]
• The causes of the current mobility revolution - Digitization & Immaterialization [5:49]
• Air Travel Opportunities for today [ 7:46]
• How to Elevate Brand in the mobility space [9:23]  
• What are the trends in connectivity in travel [11:18]
• How to recognize recognize important trends [16:26] 
• Why subjectivity is the name of the game [17:36]  
• What on demand economy leaves us wanting [18:33] 
• Post mates [20:00]
• The balance between on demand and surprise for developing a curated mobility experience  [21:39]
• How to identify learning types in your passengers [23:55]
• How flight attendants can leverage food experience for teaching [26:18]
• How Mike likes his bim bap [27:36]
• Why fads should not get a bad rap [28:36]
• Mobility fads? [30:06]
• Personal mobility as a macro trend [33:16]
• the driver for the future of mobility [35:19]
• Flexible Privacy [37:58]
• The difficulty in Experience Creation [44:58]
• Holding Back Experience Design in Large Corporations [45:38]
• How to deliver insight to gain broad traction [49:52] 
• The impact of gender on mobility [53:48]
• Enablers for today’s gender discussions [56:48]
• What Mike would like to see change in the mobility industry [59:33]
• Smart design in mobility for everyone [1:06:03]
• Garen’s random rant on selling furniture by the side of the road [1:08:16]
• Mike’s perspective on polybranded travel experiences [1:10:35]

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