Phil Gilbert

Phil Gilbert’s career spans 45 years of startups, big companies and seats on multiple Boards of Directors. He’s actively run companies and organizations as small as one person (first startup!) to 400,000, and he’s learned how to navigate the scale points in between. Gilbert’s operational experience spans from product to talent and cultural transformation. He’s a frequent lecturer at the National Defense University in Washington, DC, on leadership and design.

After selling his third startup to IBM in 2010, Gilbert was asked to spearhead a broad transformation of how IBM teams understand and solve complex problems. Using Agile and Design Thinking as the foundation for the changes, Gilbert established a modern standard for the role of the arts in business — adding formally-trained designers into IBM at an unprecedented scale, and re-skilling its global workforce in design thinking and agile practices. This transformation is the subject of an HBS Case Study and has been documented in the New York Times, Fortune and in the documentary film "The Loop.”

For this work, in 2018 Gilbert was inducted into the New York Foundation for the Arts' Hall of Fame. In 2019, the State of Oklahoma (Gilbert’s native state) named him an Oklahoma Creativity Ambassador for his achievements in the world of creative thinking and innovation. At IBM, Gilbert also served as co-chair of the global Women’s Executive Council, and established the Racial Equity in Design team. Both roles reflect Gilbert’s advocacy for greater diversity in order to better inform systemic decision making and empathy, resulting in greater innovation and better business performance.

Gilbert retired from full-time operational responsibilities in 2021, in order to focus on helping the next generation of entrepreneurs, business and military leaders understand the benefits of design on innovation and team performance. Gilbert’s career prior to IBM included 30 years as a start-up entrepreneur, and he regularly consults and lectures on topics of corporate culture and large scale transformation. He graduated as a Pe-et (top ten) senior from the University of Oklahoma in 1978 and lives in Austin, Texas.