Walter Herbst, in 1962, founded what became Herbst LaZar Bell Inc. The firm grew under his leadership to be one of the three largest independently owned product design and development firms in the country. He left that firm after transferring it into an employee owned firm (ESOP) and is a partner in Herbst Produkt, headquartered in Silicon Valley. Professor Herbst holds a courtesy appointment in the Kellogg School of Management where he brings his expertise for product development into the classroom with a course he designed dealing with the Management of Product Development. For the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, he created the Master of Product Design and Development Program. The program is the only program in the country that deals with the totality of issues related to product development and includes all the standard MBA courses as well as advanced concepts in PD&D. Professor Herbst is a Fellow in Industrial Design; IDEA, the Institute of Design Engineering and Applications program; as well as the Segal Design Institute and is a NCEER Scholar (Northwestern Center for Education Research) for Northwestern University. Professor Herbst also serves on the Advisory Board for the Department of Material Sciences at Arizona State University and on the Advisory Board for Art and Design at the University of Illinois, Champaign/Urbana. Walter holds over 80 patents in hardware, houseware and medical products. He is listed in “Who’s Who of American Inventors”, as well as other “Who’s Who” publications, and is a frequent contributor of articles in various trade journals. An expert in his field, he is frequently invited to speak at national and international industry trade shows and events. In addition, he was a recipient of the “Design of the Decade” award from the Industrial Design Society of America for his work with Gillette in the spring of 2001.