Brian Rink

Visiting Faculty
Nationality: US

Brian Rink is a design planner and strategist who helps clients identify and exploit new business opportunities. His work translates emergent cultural and technological changes in the world into new product, service and brand innovations that reframe and expand his clients’ offerings.

Brian has more than 12 years of design consulting experience, with clients that include industry leaders in the white goods, e-commerce, automotive, travel and healthcare industries. After receiving a Masters of Design from the Illinois Institute of Technology, Brian joined Doblin Group in Chicago as a Program Integrator. He led a major product innovation effort for Whirlpool Corporation that resulted in greater integration of the company’s marketing and design activities and improved Whirlpool’s competitiveness.

In 1999, Brian joined IDEO in San Francisco where he contributed to the development of the studio’s strategic planning capabilities and managed a variety of innovation-focused client projects. Brian participated in a major client engagement for Marriott that was aimed at re-inventing the experience of business travel for the company’s flagship brands. The work identified unmet traveler needs and underleveraged touch points. The resulting design strategy is currently being introduced across Marriott properties worldwide.

Brian is a member of IDEO’s Transformation Practice, where he helps companies and organisations rethink and rebuild their own approaches to innovation and new product development. In recent years, Brian has consulted with a growing number of companies in Japan and Asia. His work focuses on a collaborative project approach with client teams to facilitate skill building and the adoption of new design methodologies.

Earlier in his career, Brian was part of a three-person management team at Sapient Corporation tasked with launching the IT consultancy’s Tokyo office.

Before embarking on a career in design and strategy, Brian served for more than eight years as an economist and Japan specialist in the U.S. Foreign Service. Brian received a bachelor degree in Foreign Service from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He has studied and worked in Japan for a total of eight years and speaks and reads Japanese
fluently.