Phil Gilbert

Phil Gafford Gilbert Sr. is an American executive and design leader specializing in corporate culture. He spent 30 years as a start-up entrepreneur before IBM appointed him as their General Manager of Design in 2012 to spearhead a broad transformation of the company. and was the subject of the documentary film The Loop.

Gilbert retired in 2021 but remains active as an investor, consultant, lecturer, and member of various boards of directors.

Early life and education Gilbert was born and raised in Oklahoma City. As a young man, he worked as a newspaper carrier for The Daily Oklahoman and Oklahoma City Times, attended John Marshall High School, and graduated as a Pe-et (top ten) senior from the University of Oklahoma in 1978.

Career Gilbert managed a variety of tech start-ups and other companies, including Lombardi Software in Austin, Texas, where he was Chief Technology Officer and later president.

When Virginia M. Rometty became chief executive in January 2012, she told her executive team that she wanted “to rethink and reimagine” the experience of IBM’s customers. She asked Gilbert “what would it take to get our massive company to move more quickly and invent things in new ways? And fast?” Gilbert opted to put “Design thinking at the center” of the cultural transformation of the company.

Design Thinking According to Gilbert, design thinking reverses traditional technology product development to focus more on user experience. To facilitate this, Gilbert organized the Design Program Office (DPO) in 2013 and hired IBM’s first cohort of 60 designers. IBM set up a design facility in Gilbert’s home of Austin, where among other things they started holding design “boot camps” for new hires and multidisciplinary product teams. To improve the user experience, Gilbert integrated designers into “all of the really gorpy details of integrating a product.” The book examines the adoption of organizational change and argues for treating change as a product that employees can choose to adopt rather than as a mandate imposed from above. The transformation described in the book involved IBM's global workforce of approximately 400,000 employees.

The publication received coverage in Design Observer Fast Company and Fortune

In 2026, Gilbert was appointed to the Board of Trustees of the Eames Institute for Infinite Curiosity. He was also included in the institute's 2026 Curious 100, which recognizes individuals whose work reflects curiosity and creative approaches to problem-solving. Alice Waters was among the other individuals included in the 2026 list.

In January 2026, the Dave Alexander Center for Social Capital named Gilbert one of its "Top 66 People-Centric Leaders of 2025." The organization cited his work on organizational change and his approach to employee adoption of new ways of working.

Personal life Gilbert lives in Austin, Texas. He has lectured at the National Defense University in Washington, DC, on leadership and design.

In 2018, Gilbert was inducted into the New York Foundation for the Arts Hall of Fame for his role in establishing a modern standard for the role of the arts in business. In 2019, Gov. Kevin Stitt named him an Oklahoma Creativity Ambassador for his achievements in the world of creative thinking and innovation.