Ayse Birsel
Most organisations talk about innovation as a culture problem. The harder question is whether they have a method anyone can repeat. Without a structured process for breaking preconceptions and rebuilding under real constraints, creative work stays trapped inside a few senior heads and dies on contact with the operating model.
Ayse Birsel is an industrial designer and author who teaches leaders and teams to apply a working design method, Deconstruction:Reconstruction, to their products, their work and their lives.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Ayse Birsel
- She brings a method, not a mood. Deconstruction: Reconstruction is a four-step process (deconstruct, point of view, reconstruct, express) developed across two decades of paid client work, and groups can run it on a real problem in the room.
- Her design credentials are commercial, not theoretical: products and systems for Herman Miller, Toyota, Amazon, IKEA, Knoll, GE and Colgate-Palmolive, with Resolve for Herman Miller named by The New York Times among the defining furniture pieces of the last 100 years.
- She bridges product innovation and people innovation. The same method behind the Zoë Washlet for TOTO underpins Design the Work You Love, which is why teams leave with a tool they can apply to org design, not just to creativity.
- She is one of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches, and the cohort itself was formed inside her Design the Life You Love process. That credential signals trust from the most senior coaching network in business.
- Recognised by Fast Company as one of the Most Creative People in Business and by Thinkers50 on its Radar list of thinkers most likely to shape the future of organisations.
Biography highlights
- Co-founder and Creative Director, Birsel + Seck, New York.
- Master’s in Industrial Design, Pratt Institute, on a Fulbright Scholarship; undergraduate in Industrial Design at Middle East Technical University.
- Author of “Design the Life You Love” (Penguin Random House, 2015) and “Design the Long Life You Love” (Running Press, 2022).
- Thinkers50 Radar list of 30 thinkers most likely to shape the future of organisations.
- One of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business (2017); member of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches.
- Work in the permanent collections of MoMA, Cooper Hewitt and the Philadelphia Museum of Art; clients include Herman Miller, Toyota, Amazon, GE, IKEA, Knoll, Staples, Colgate-Palmolive and TOTO.
Biography
Most organisations treat innovation as a personality trait. Ayse Birsel treats it as a process. Deconstruction: Reconstruction, the method she has used at Birsel + Seck for two decades, is built around four steps: take the problem apart, change the point of view, put it back together within real constraints, and give the result a clean form. It is the same logic she has applied to a Herman Miller workstation, a Toyota concept car and a TOTO washlet.
Her credentials are commercial. Birsel + Seck, the New York studio she runs with Bibi Seck, has produced work for Amazon, GE, IKEA, Staples, Knoll and Colgate-Palmolive. The Resolve System for Herman Miller has been cited by The New York Times among the defining furniture pieces of the last 100 years, and her work sits in the permanent collections of MoMA, Cooper Hewitt and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She trained at Middle East Technical University and took a master’s at Pratt Institute on a Fulbright Scholarship.
The translation from product to people came through her books. “Design the Life You Love” (Penguin Random House, 2015) and “Design the Long Life You Love” (2022) take the same four-step method and apply it to careers, relationships and ageing well. Marshall Goldsmith ran the program himself, and the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches network was formed inside it. She is a member of that cohort and on the Thinkers50 Radar list of thinkers most likely to shape the future of organisations.
For corporate audiences, this matters because the method is the product. Teams do not leave with a story about creativity. They leave having deconstructed a real brief, tested a different point of view and reconstructed an option they can take back to the operating model on Monday.
Key speaking topics
- Innovation method and design thinking in practice
- Deconstruction: Reconstruction as a creative process for teams
- Designing the work, not just the workplace
- Life design and career reinvention for senior leaders
- Creativity under constraint
- Human-centred product and service design
- Long-life and longevity design
Ideal for
- Innovation, R&D and product leaders looking for a repeatable creative method.
- CHROs and learning leaders running senior leadership offsites or executive development programs.
- Boards and executive teams working through reinvention, succession and second-act questions.
- Design, marketing and customer experience functions translate creativity into operating decisions.
Audience outcomes
- A working knowledge of the four-step Deconstruction: Reconstruction process applied to a real organisational brief.
- A different point of view on a problem the team came in with, tested in the room.
- Language and structure for talking about creativity that does not depend on individual talent.
- A personal life-design or career-design artefact that senior leaders can take away from the session.
- Confidence that innovation can be run as a discipline, not staged as a culture programme.
Talks
A live application of Birsel’s design process to the audience’s own careers, choices and constraints, drawn from her book of the same name.
Key takeaways:
- The four-step Deconstruction: Reconstruction process applied to a personal brief.
- A point-of-view shift on a constraint the participant currently treats as fixed.
- A simple expression of a redesigned next chapter, on paper, before leaving the room.
A team-facing version of the method, used to redesign how a group works together, not where they work.
Key takeaways:
- A shared map of what the team is actually optimising for.
- A reconstruction of one working practice the team agrees to change.
- A vocabulary for treating work design as an ongoing creative process.
A keynote pitched at innovation, product and design leaders, drawn from twenty years of Birsel + Seck client work.
Key takeaways:
- How to break preconceptions on a brief without losing the brief.
- How constraints sharpen creative output rather than limit it.
- How to move a team from creative discussion to a designed artefact.