
Majid Iqbal
Special Advisor at Ministerie van DefensieMajid is an expert on implementing policy and strategy through the designs of services. He is a special advisor at the Defense Materiel Organization (DMO), within the Dutch Ministry of Defense. He leads a team developing new thinking and tooling, using which teams in government can more boldly execute on their missions. Majid is also co-founder of similar unit called XLAB at the RVO.NL within the Ministry of Economic Affairs & Climate.
In 2010, Majid made a surprising discovery leading to new thinking on implementing strategy through the designs of services. In 2012, the Dutch government became the first user of a new system and method, putting a new kind of power in the hands of product managers, policy makers, and strategists. Other adopters include Fortune 500 firms such as Lowe's, Boeing and UnitedHealthcare, and Johnson & Johnson.
In 2018, Majid wrote ‘Thinking in Services’ (BIS Publishers, Amsterdam), a book that introduces a fundamentally new way of thinking about the designs of services, exposing the structures and dynamics that determine failure and success. The book introduces a design language called 16x. Based on the book, Majid now teaches a popular course on the strategic design of services.
Majid is visiting faculty at IE School of Human Sciences & Technology, in Madrid. He has also guest-lecture at TU/Delft (Netherlands), JAIST (Japan), and UFRJ (Brazil). At Carnegie Mellon he developed and taught the very first course on strategy, design, and organization for services, at the Heinz College of public policy and management.