Jan Chipchase

Why you should listen

Jan Chipcase can guess what's inside your bag and knows all about the secret contents of your refrigerator. It isn't a second sight or a carnival trick; he knows about the ways we think and act because he's spent years studying our behavioral patterns. He's traveled from country to country to learn everything he can about what makes us tick, from our relationship to our phones (hint: it's deep, and it's real) to where we stow our keys each night. He oversees the creative direction of frog design , an innovation firm that advises the design products for Microsoft Office, Nike, UNICEF, GE, Sephora, Gatorade and Alitalia.

Before moving to frog design, Jan's discoveries and insights helped to inspire the development of the next generations of phones and services at Nokia. As he put it, if he does his job right, you should be seeing the results of his research hitting the streets and airwaves within the next 3 to 15 years.

What others say

“A trove of mobile trivia, Mr Chipchase (actual job title: principal researcher) knows, first-hand, that burkha-wearing students in Iran cheat in exams using hidden Bluetooth headsets; that 50 per cent of the world’s women keep their phones in their handbags (and miss 30 per cent of their calls); and that most Asian early adopters who watch mobile TV ignore the mobile part and tune in from home” — Times UK