Alexander Manu

Alexander Manu (born February 1, 1954, in Bucharest, Romania) is a management consultant, lecturer and author on management, particularly on the subject of innovation.

Early life and education

In 1978 Manu graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts of Bucharest, Romania.

Career

Manu teaches "Innovation, Foresight, and Business Design" at the Rotman School of Management in Toronto and is a Professor at the OCAD University. He is a management consultant, lecturer and author and since 2007 a senior partner and "Chief Imaginator" at InnoSpa International Partners, a consulting firm. He was the founder of Axis Group International, a design, development and applied research consultancy established in 1980 in Toronto where he was responsible for the development of strategic intellectual property and pre-competitive business concepts in the areas of conceptual design, intellectual property, user interaction design, ideal experience mapping and industrial design. His original research in motivation theories led to the application of play behaviour in innovation strategies, competitive analysis, trend mapping and new business models for companies as diverse as Motorola, LEGO, and Whirlpool.^{[citation needed]}

In tandem with his teaching and consulting work, Manu has made regular appearances as an international lecturer.

Until late 2007, Alexander was the Founder and Executive Director of Research at the Beal Institute for Strategic Creativity, a non-profit research institute based in Toronto. With strong ties to the Ontario College of Art & Design, Manu's work developed new methodologies in strategic foresight, focusing on the intersection of behavior, technology and organization.

Manu generated the concept of ToolToy, a methodology for the development of physical models that integrate the characteristics of play value into products, services and system features. He was also one of the early advocates of Experience Design, which he described as the true esthetic of design in a series of articles written for the magazine "Studio" published in 1994-1995 and compiled in book form in "The Big Idea of Design" published in 1998.

Founder of The Humane Village (1993) and editor of The Humane Village Journal, a periodical dedicated to the exploration of design as an instrument for social change, Alexander Manu chaired the "Socially Responsible Design Task Force" of the Ontario Design Strategy in 2004 and was Co-Chair of the Organizing Committee of "ICSID 97’ Toronto", serving as director and Chair of the Program Committee.

A past president of the Association of Chartered Industrial Designers of Ontario, past board member of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID), and past member of various government-level advisory boards in Canada and Asia, consulting on design strategy for the Department of Canadian Heritage, the China External Trade Development Council and the Korea Institute of Design Promotion. He is presently on the Advisory Board of the Japan Institute of Design(Tokyo) and Design for the World - Barcelona, an international NGO that provides and promotes humanitarian design solutions. For his contribution to the development of the visual arts, he has been elected an Academician of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA).^{[citation needed]}

Publications

• Disruptive Business: Desire, Innovation and the Re-Design of Business (Gower, 2010; ISBN 0321618467)
• Everything 2.0 (2008; ISBN 0321618467 )
• The Imagination Challenge: Strategic Foresight and Innovation in the Global Economy (Peachpit Press, 2006; ISBN 9780566092404)
• The Big Idea of Design (1999)
• ToolToys: Tools with an Element of Play (1995)