Professor Baback Yazdani is Dean of Nottingham Business School and Professor of Product Development, the Vice-Chair of the Executive Board of UK Association of Business School, Board Member of European Foundation for Management Development’s (EFDM).

He is former regional chairman of the CBI in East Midlands and a member of CBI’s influential national chairmen’s committee and is an internationally recognised expert in the Automotive Industry, Lean Management and Product Design and Development. The Business Insider Magazine has successively voted him amongst the Top 50 most influential business leaders in the Midlands; he also makes frequent appearances national TV, Radio and International Press.

Baback combines senior leadership experience in international business and top academic institutions in USA and Europe. During his Deanship since 2007, NBS has rapidly transformed from a regional establishment to be internationally recognised as the business school for business and has become the first business school across the world to fully apply Lean as its Operating System.

As a Professor of Product Development as well as an expert in Innovation, and Lean Management advises CEOs and Boards in industry and academia to improve performance. He is a strong proponent of business-academia partnership and has created a number of centres for the successful exploitation of R&D.

Baback’s career began in 1988 as the Head of Foundry and Forging plant in Piraiki Orichalkouryia AE in Greece. He later joined John Brown Automation in Coventry, working on the Automation of Design Systems. From 1993 to 2000 he was a Principal Fellow at Warwick University and led Innovation and Product Design and Development, creating a reputation for in New Product Introduction research and education working with a major global companies in auto industry, defence and electronics. He joined Ford Motor Company’s global organisation in 2000 and until 2003 was the Director of Business and Operations for Lincoln-Mercury in USA and later Premier Automotive Group in Europe and was one of the main architects of FMC’s Global Product Development System. Baback ran Product Development Operations at Jaguar Land Rover (then part of Ford Motor Company) between 2003-2006, where he led the introduction of ‘Lean’ to Product development, whilst merging Jaguar and Land Rover’s Design and Engineering operations. He led 9 large project teams (300+) simultaneously that introduced a host of new vehicles into the market between 2000 and 2007.

He is a chartered Mechanical Engineer and has an MSc in Manufacturing Systems Engineering and a PhD in Engineering (Product Development) from Warwick. He has authored more than 60 articles in product development and concurrent engineering. He is a Fellow of Institute of Engineering Technology and a member of Federation Europeene D’Associations Nationales D’Ingeniers; American Society of Mechanical Engineers; and the British Academy of Management.