A Few More All-Star Apple Alumni to Celebrate

BusinessWeek recently put together an interesting run-down of prominent Apple Design alumni and what they’re up to these days. It’s a good list, but far from comprehensive, as is required in any such piece. I did want to highlight a couple of people who didn’t make the cut.

It’s literally two. I promise.

This is Ray Riley. For a good seven years, he had a guiding hand in Apple’s design group, working on the designs for what became the first generation Power Macs, the incredible Apple Adjustable Keyboard, the Quadra 800, and, if you can believe it, the Pippin, Apple’s only ever game console. Ray left Apple in 1997, I believe, to join what was then known as Nike’s [Tech Lab and is now called the Explore Group. There, he has helped Nike shift its focus from shoes to sports, and moving their business into watches, sunglasses, mp3 players and all points in between. He is also the single person most responsible for teaming Apple and Nike together for the Nike+iPod Sport Kit, which is itself a build on the Mp3 player he and his team co-created with Philips a bit earlier. Ray’s an insanely talented design strategist, and I’ve had the privilege to meet him. Probably the best Apple alumnus I can think of for getting the questions right rather than just designing answers off the bat. We’ve worked with him at Jump for years, and we’re all a little bit awed by him, to be honest.

(Image via IDSA)

Second is Andy Hargadon, now the director of UC Davis’s Center for Entrepreneurship. Andy was a key designer and strategist at Apple during the early ’90s, having migrated over from David Kelley Design (one of IDEO’s three forebears) to the mother ship. Bill Scott, who is himself the collective memory of Silicon Valley design, still calls Andy the boy wonder, it’s not hard to see why. He had a profound impact on the creation of the PowerBook, particularly the amazing 500 series, and he understands better than almost anyone just how the flow of information in an organization promotes or impedes innovation. He also wrote How Breakthroughs Happen, a masterful book about innovation that I can’t recommend highly enough. He’s a very sharp guy and a great speaker. He’s almost worth going to UC Davis for all by himself.

So there you have it. Just two more Apple All-Star Alumni for the list.