One of the things I did when I started at Sound United was I put together a straight up art history lecture on the history of industrial design. I presented it at a free company wide “lunch and learn”. In the presentation I covered pre WW2 beginnings of ID so people understood this has been going on for a long time, I did a section on Eliot Noyes, head of design at IBM post WW2, Raymond Loewy and the MAYA concept, then Dieter Rams and all the parallels to Apple, ending with Peter Schryer and his 20 year plan for Audi that started in the 80s and how he did that in 5 years for Kia. The. I did a segment on what industrial designers do and don’t do and what characteristics make up a good designer, and ended with some common misconceptions .
The goal was to get every employee not only knowledgeable, but excited about design, so that everyone from the sales guys to the customer service people on the phones could speak about it.