Nodes of Design#119: The Business of Accessibility and Inclusive Design with Benedikt Lehnert

Benedikt is a seasoned design executive with the heart of a maker and 20+ years of deep expertise in creating impactful products people love and leading the world-class teams that make them. His leadership has shaped how hundreds of millions of people interact with technology. Benedikt is the founder of 74West, a hands-on advisory practice where he partners closely 1:1 with CEOs and boards who are at pivotal moments with their business. Combining his proven, practical frameworks for transformational leadership with cutting-edge research, Benedikt helps company leaders forge exceptional teams, strategies, and tactics to deliver products that inspire customer love and thus create lasting business value. Benedikt also serves as an Entrepreneurship & Design Fellow at Princeton University, where he teaches aspiring entrepreneurs both during the academic year (“Creating value in the real world”) and the eLab summer program at the Keller Center. His research explores the convergence of entrepreneurship, humanistic design, and business leadership with a focus on AI and co-creativity, neuroaesthetics, and the socio-economic responsibility of design. As a board member of the Design Executive Council (DXC) Benedikt helps shape the standards of humanistic design and strategic leadership as AI transforms experience design and business strategy. Until January 2025, Benedikt was the Chief Design Officer at Stark tackling Digital Accessibility which he sees as “one of this century’s biggest design problems that’s affecting 2B+ people on the planet.” As Chief Design Officer of SAP, he led 1000+ designers, researchers, and engineers, reporting directly to SAP’s Executive Board to transform the customer experience across the company’s portfolio.  As a design executive at Microsoft, he directed key UX teams including Office and M365 Experiences while leading the evolution of the Fluent design system and aligning Microsoft’s mobile apps across platforms. Benedikt joined Microsoft through the $150M+ acquisition of Wunderlist, where he was Chief Design Officer. He scaled the product team to 70 people and helped secure funding from Atomico and Sequoia Capital. Benedikt is also the author of Typoguide, an international keynote speaker and angel investor in design-driven startups. His award-winning work has been featured in publications worldwide. Born in Saarland, Germany to a family of craftspeople, Benedikt’s appreciation for purposeful, well-crafted work runs deep. He divides his time between Princeton, NJ and Kingston, NY. You can follow Benedikt here: Web: www.benediktlehnert.com Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/benediktlehnert Newsletter: benediktlehnert.substack.com DXC Profile: https://www.designexecutivecouncil.com/articles/introducing-benedikt-lehnert-and-his-ideas-on-radical-self-inquiry-and-creative-leadership Thank you for listening to this episode of Nodes of Design. We hope you enjoy the Nodes of Design Podcast on your favorite podcast platforms- Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, and many more. If this episode helped you understand and learn something new, please share and join the knowledge-sharing community Spreadknowledge. This podcast aims to make design education accessible to all. Nodes of Design is a non-profit and self-sponsored initiative by Tejj.