Well this is truly the first time I’ve heard a top-level executive seriously say something like this:

I’m going to run an innovation group, and I’m going to hire highly creative people, design backgrounds, people who have proven their ability to think outside the box. And then I’m actually going to create some sort of career path within innovation.

That’s Mary Jo Cook, the new business vice-president for Clorox’s laundry home-care division in an interview over on BusinessWeek.

Years ago, as I was planning my move into ID, I went looking for some information on career paths. I was lucky enough to come across a business article in the San Diego Union-Tribune that included quotes from Nissan Design International’s VP of Design, Gerald Hirshberg. Not knowing who he was or the status he had within the design community, I sent him a couple of letters with some questions. Fortunately he was kind enough to respond. One of those questions was: “What’s the career path for an industrial designer?”. That apparently confused him as he basically wrote back: There is no path. You either make it or you don’t. Brutal. And in truth, that’s still largely how the field works. The designer’s career path – if you’re lucky enough to even get onto it – usually dead-ends with “Design Manager”, a position normally equivalent to Project Manager on a development team. It’s a low ceiling. And it’s still rare to hear of designers as senior executives at large corporations. Perhaps influential types like Ms. Cook can help to remove that barrier.