A Designer on Designing: A Conversation with Johannes Torpe

Abstract

Organizational research has explored how design thinking can fulfill the human needs of customers or users, but it has largely overlooked how it is shaped by the designer’s subjective experiences. In an attempt to stimulate greater scholarly interest in exploring the designer behind the process of design thinking, we integrate materials from three interviews conducted with the renowned designer Johannes Torpe. Throughout the interviews, Johannes stresses the interpersonal aspects of his work, especially how he interacts with customers and how he fosters (and also controls) the creativity of the other designers that he employs in his studio. As our conversation unfolds, Johannes responds to our questions as an evolving creative person, a celebrated designer, a manager of a creative collective of designers, a top designer employed by a large corporation, and a business owner of a celebrated Danish design studio.