Creative Byline founder and CEO Brad MacLean didn’t exactly dream of working in publishing. He got an engineering degree from University of Michigan but has never held an engineering job. (“It taught me a way of thinking and approaching problems,” he says, when asked why he bothered.) He worked in the computer industry for awhile and then at Herman Miller, Inc., where he spent more than 10 years working with designers, including Bill Stumpf and Don Chadwick, co-designers of the iconic Aeron office chair. As a product development executive, he gained experience bringing an idea to market, improving systems and processes, and addressing problems through design.

When he heard about the snail-mail submission process, he saw a problem worth solving. In the process of coming up with Creative Byline, he used a lot of what he’d learned at Herman Miller about research, technology, and design.

“What the user needs is paramount, and if we were going to improve the submissions process, we had to figure out what each user—writer, editor, publisher—needed and how to give it to them,” he says. “The thing I’m most excited about is that Creative Byline really does give everyone the thing they told us they want most. Writers get access to editors and a timely response. Editors can control the flow of manuscripts. And publishers get a more cost-effective way of dealing with submissions. I’m pleased with our solution.”

We think everyone else will be, too.

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