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Jon you’ve acquired a significant amount of years doing Design Strategy and Design Research, you’re considered an expert in these areas and in areas such as empathy for customers. These terms have recently begun to pervade the business world globally. How would you describe these areas of Design Strategy and Design Research for business leaders, who are just hearing of this term and are very interested?

Design Strategy is about creating and presenting an optimistic vision of the future. It’s a north-star: a direction in which to aim. When I describe Design Strategy to executives, they understand the need for a vision, and it’s often left to them to paint the picture of that vision. But while they may be the most equipped to understand where the business should go, they often need help understanding how that business vision can align with a customer vision. Design Strategy, working in parallel with a business strategy, describes where to go in order to deliver real, emotional and experiential value.

“Design strategy, working in parallel with a business strategy, describes where to go in order to deliver real, emotional and experiential value.”

How about innovation, how would you describe this within the sphere of Design and Business?

I don’t really know what innovation is. For some time, I thought it meant “something new that people need.” Then, I thought it meant “something new that sells.” Now, I think it’s closer to “something new.” A lot of innovation is meaningless. It’s new for newness sake and has no real value for anyone. I would push a business to aim towards “appropriate” and “valuable” rather than “innovative.”

Having taught design over the years, would you say design is something that can easily be adopted by businesses who aren’t familiar with the process or is design as a process only for a certain type of business? And why?

Design (or anything else) can become part of a business context if it’s treated as a first-class citizen. This means providing the discipline with funding and autonomy. But for companies with more conservative and formal business culture, or for companies founded on the backs of technological advancement, there’s more needed than just money and power. A cultural change doesn’t happen through a mandate. It happens slowly and with evidence. Introducing design into a culture means playing a long game, and the bigger the company, the longer that game may be. We’ve seen companies like IBM and GE stand up design studios seemingly overnight, and the results are shaky (one is rumoured to suffer from attrition, while the other has imploded entirely).

“A cultural change doesn’t happen through a mandate. It happens slowly and with evidence.”

What do you think makes this process of design successful? Do certain things have to be in place, is there a specific pattern to follow?

Doing design is about having attention to detail and craft. This is true when drawing things, and it’s true when doing qualitative research, synthesizing data, developing strategy, and any other form of design. For design to thrive, an environment needs to be provided that fosters this craftsmanship. Designers need to be recruited selectively, rather than in mass; they need time and a clear runway to do their job; they need to be well compensated and feel empowered and recognized; and, they need to see the results of their work manifested in real change for the company and for customers.

“For design to thrive, an environment needs to be provided that fosters this craftsmanship.”

You have taught and are still teaching people about design; you have also consulted for global companies who have launched successful products/services. From your experience, how can a big organization of say over 500 staff build a culture of design and innovation from top to bottom?

Slowly, which is typically not the answer most executives want to hear. Like any other cultural change, an autocratic approach doesn’t work, because it disenfranchises as many people as it may empower. A bottom-up approach works, but takes a very long time, and needs to be grounded in small wins. Many of the companies that are successful in introducing design into their company didn’t do it on purpose. It emerged that way based on the types of people that were hired, and how those people were treated.

What #innovationmoment have you experienced in your career so far? (We define an #innovationmoment as something you’ve been a part of or have witnessed that has been incredibly life-changing and impactful to others) Can you share?

I’m not sure that starting a school counts as an “innovation moment,” because it took about two years to get started, and in the last ten years, we’ve reinvented it at least ten times. But I do know that any educational institution can claim impact on people: alumni, students, and the community benefit from any form of quality education. I stay in touch with my alumni, and when I see them in positions of leadership and hear about the great things they do, I realize that the school has had a strong, measurable, and positive impact on their careers.

Your job description is incredibly intriguing. Can you tell us what you do as Global Senior Director, Enterprise Analytics?

By drawing on my more than 20 years experience in leading the design and development of business intelligence (as known as BI) solutions, I apply the principles of design thinking to deliver successful business outcomes with enterprise analytics.

At SAP, I guide small, agile teams that embrace an entrepreneurial spirit to create new opportunities for innovation and help our customers and C-suite executives realize business growth and profitability.

Since the birth of smartphones and tablets, I have been fortunate to have been at the heart of digital transformation as we embrace mobile BI. I love this intersection of mobile, analytics, and the cloud.

You’re as much an evangelist for design (thinking) and innovation as you are for using technology (cloud and mobile) to empower C-suite through analytics. What are your thoughts on design and innovation as they stand on their own and then used in the area of business intelligence (that is, if there’s a relation there)?

I have always advocated the use of design-thinking principles to innovate new solutions for business problems. If we think of design as a mindset, instead of an abstract concept, people and processes become the primary focus of innovation, while technology plays a secondary role. And the rules behind designing and innovating business intelligence solutions are no different.

“If we think of design as a mindset, instead of an abstract concept, people and processes become the primary focus of innovation, while technology plays a secondary role”

Let me give you an example. Several years ago, SAP asked me to design our internal business intelligence platform called global customer operations (GCO) to support our double-digit sales growth. At first, our teams immediately focused on technology, especially since, at the time, a cloud deployment was not an option and on-premise solutions required much more effort and investment. But I chose a different direction: I deliberately chose to focus on the user experience because the area was often overlooked.

I began asking questions that were never considered for the implementation of traditional enterprise systems or business intelligence solutions. This move surprised everyone in the organization and received some push back and strong objections due to pre-established aggressive goals and timelines.

By mapping the user journey, I was able to help our teams recognize, isolate, and address pain points to design a complete user experience. With each rapid prototype, we validated interim steps and made new discoveries in areas that would have been never considered otherwise.

Even if the initiative was something different, I would have used the same approach to execute it. This would be the case whether I was involved or asked to assist in projects for an enterprise resource planning (ERP), human resources (HR), customer relationship management (CRM), or finance solution. 

The focus of technology design and innovation should never be on what the technology can do for the user, but rather what the user can do with that technology. If our design—especially in an enterprise setting—does not proactively tackle the weaknesses nor maximize the strengths of the technology, we are bound to fail no matter how elaborate and intricate the solution.

This reality requires leadership with forward-thinking ideals to cement a culture of design thinkers who can expand the window of opportunity with solutions that can be built on top of an innovation foundation through design. 

“Several years ago, SAP asked me to design our internal business intelligence platform called global customer operations (GCO) to support our double-digit sales growth. At first, our teams immediately focused on technology, But I chose a different direction: I deliberately chose to focus on the user experience because the area was often overlooked.”

You recently wrote an article on customer empathy as it’s used in design thinking. Would you relate this qualitative aspect of understanding and providing solutions to customer needs to the practice of, for example, mobile design and analytics to make informed decisions on how to better serve customers?

If we believe that customer-centric design is about “looking out from the inside, not outside-in,” we need to be in the trenches with our developers and users. Working, observing, and, more importantly, suffering side by side with them allows us to see the experience through their eyes, within their authentic circles of influence, and under realistic conditions. We can’t do that from behind a desk. We have to live the experience, rather than experience it from a distance.

Empathy is the shortest distance between design thinking and customer-centric innovation. When we place the user (or in some cases, the customer) at the core of everything we do in our design-thinking journey, we foster a human-centered approach that remains focused on needs, including those that are unarticulated or unknown. If we bring empathy to the forefront and make it a focal point, we can expand our capacity to understand our users, before we judge the experience or execute the solution. That’s the essence of customer empathy.

Take, for example, the performance concept in business intelligence and mobile applications. It represents the speed at which information is loaded and displayed on a mobile device. And the design and management of that can be tricky. 

People who design mobile experiences often forget the psychology behind judging or interpreting experiences. Humans react to emotional probes—whether solicited or not—that are typically accompanied by emotional assurances, instead of logic, reason, or dispassion. I call these triggers “emosurances.” 

Emosurances include sentiments such as: 

• “We don’t want to be left in the dark.” 
• “Updates and continuous information flow are good.” 
• “We want to know the next steps.” 
• “We hate uncertainty.” 

Regardless of their shape, form, or frequency, we seek these cues to assure ourselves and shape the user experience. Emosurances are the points of light in design thinking that we seek to uncover, which are commonly hidden or marginalised. 

When you compare the experience of a mobile device with that of a desktop PC, people tend to be less patient. 

Think about it for a moment. When we work with PCs or laptops, we may sit in a relatively comfortable chair. We are not holding anything, but we are likely waiting for the next step after we click on a link or button. In most cases, we can minimize the active application window and multi-task as we take an unexpected phone call or take a break for coffee or tea. In this case, minutes can feel like seconds. 

Now, contrast that PC experience with a mobile experience. There is a good chance we are not in an office or sitting at a desk. We are likely holding a mobile device in our hands. If we switch from an analytics app to another app to kill time or view a notification pop-up, the live session on the cloud application may stop. In other words, you must restart the query to acquire real-time information. A report or dashboard with average performance on a desktop may not survive in the hands of a mobile user. Seconds seem like minutes. It doesn’t matter what app you build; people won’t use it if they are frustrated or discouraged.

“…By mapping the user journey, I was able to help our teams recognize, isolate, and address pain points to design a complete user experience. With each rapid prototype, we validated interim steps and made new discoveries in areas that would have been never considered otherwise.”

In describing empathy, the design-thinking methodology of learning about customers, you said, “To learn, we must listen more than we talk. When we observe, we disappear, rather than interfere. There is no room for sharing our opinions or selling the solution. We want facts. If we can’t understand the ‘why’ behind an experience or problem, any assumptions about the ‘what’ and ‘how’ become skewed or misleading.” We thought this was a very profound and descriptive way to talk about empathizing with customers. How does this apply in the world of cloud and mobile analytics?

Subject-matter expertise is a critical multiplier of innovation, as well as an essential element of collective insight. But its strength lies in the application of the empathy principle from design thinking: the desire to seek realization and perceptiveness in the experience, not accumulated experience confined to raw knowledge. 

Listening and observing are critical exercises, but we must do more. If you know something, you can’t suffer because the knowledge holds you hostage. If you are not experiencing the pressure that, for example, a salesperson or executive faces and the serious implications of those decisions, you’re not capturing the essence of your users’ journey. Whether you are an analyst, designer, or software engineer, you must get away from your desk and jump in.

For example, when creating reports and dashboards for enterprise-wide consumption on mobile devices, analysts or content developers use online viewers that simulate the look and feel of a mobile device. Sometimes, I find out that some of them may never view it on an actual mobile device before implementation. Testing on a simulated screen does not even come close to the real-life experience of a mobile device and the conditions that affect it. 

A best practice that I use when designing an application for a mobile use case is an immediate move toward a proof of concept because I want to fail early and often. The prototype, no matter how basic it may be, provides the opportunity to capture, what I call, fail points. I closely watch users, with different backgrounds and tech-savviness, play and interact with the device. I want to see how they handle the device and consume the information on the screen. Are they focused or unfocused? When possible, I record these findings on video when possible, so I don’t interrupt their natural workflow or habits by taking notes and asking questions. 

“Empathy is the shortest distance between design thinking and customer-centric innovation.”

For C-suite executives, is there a way to combine the empathy of design thinking with cloud and mobile analytics to drive innovation and transformation in their companies?

This is a great question! I have spent most of my career helping C-suite executives. That experience has afforded me with a deeper understanding of what drives executive decision-making. 

When I taught doctorate-level classes at Wilmington University, I had a very different philosophy in teaching this subject, compared to traditional methodologies embraced by the faculty. Instead of focusing on theories, tools, and technologies, I designed a curriculum that centered on how data-driven decision-making drives better-informed decisions, not necessarily better decisions. Employing familiar, everyday business models, products, and services, I had a chance to highlight the role that people and processes play when shaping actionable insight. And as I engage with C-suite executives, I have found that the same experience and approach apply as well. 

Competing on design thinking requires a fundamental shift in how we design solutions to business problems and, more importantly, how we channel the essential values of design thinking in everything we do.  To make a greater impact and enable a competitive edge with design thinking, businesses need to place more emphasis—first and foremost—on what I like to call the application of core principles.

This viewpoint requires design thinking as a framework for innovation. We pollinate new and old ideas, which translate into solutions that drive growth and profitability. Furthermore, we can compete on design thinking because its core principles will remain timeless for generations to come.

Can you elaborate on this profound statement you made in a recent post on Medium? “The traditional value proposition of a product or service is a promise of particular utility value. If you get X, you will receive Y as a result of Z. The design-thinking value proposition is a promise of core values: You want to get X because you care about Y and Z matters to you.”

Thank you! I love this equation. For a concept that’s so simple, it is tremendously powerful. 

The foundation of digitalization and the value created through digital transformation are centered on that understanding that they are drastically different than the design precepts of the analog world. Although the design-thinking mindset was equally effective before, its impact is amplified in the digital era. 

We no longer can remain stuck in linear thinking aimed at maximizing the expected ROI at a given risk. Nor can we afford to focus on the transaction, instead of the human experience. These mindsets may have been okay in the analog world when design capabilities were limited in most cases and made up of one-dimensional experiences. But digitalization has changed it all by transforming the user and bringing the experience to the forefront of innovation and design.

When we design products and services, we are creating experiences, even if the boundaries are narrow and controlled. This is true for a product, cloud subscription service, or online transaction. Unlike the analog world, users are empowered and in the driver’s seat because they have control, choice, and influence. In return, we must understand what matters to the user so we can build for and with that purpose to go beyond transactional elements. This, I believe, is where innovation happens. Design thinking doesn’t guarantee innovation, but innovation always hinges on design-thinking principles.

What #innovationmoment have you experienced in your career so far? (We define an #innovationmoment as something you’ve done, have been a part of, or have witnessed that has been incredibly life-changing and impactful to others)?

#Innovationmoment is such a great hashtag. This one is easy for me to recall. Shortly after the release of the very first iPad in 2010, I designed and developed SAP’s first internal mobile analytics dashboard for the office of the CEO. 

At the time, Bill McDermott was our CEO at SAP. When he began using the dashboard during his presentations, TV appearances, and customer events, I was captivated by how he would not only showcase the technology but also demonstrate firsthand the incredible value that it brought to the C-suite. Remember, this was happening during the early days of mobile adoption in Fortune 500 companies. More importantly, people were still chained to their PCs and requested printed paper copies of reports, even if the data could be consumed on their monitor screen. 

During one of those interviews, it dawned on me that he wasn’t just showcasing our technology but, more importantly, telling a story. I quickly realized the power of storytelling and building user experiences that empowered it. 

I always argue that mobile analytics isn’t about jamming lots of data with useless charts and tables on a mobile device, no matter how colorful and pretty they look. Instead, it’s about user experiences that empower faster and better-informed decision-making through storytelling. 

This #innovationmoment is what kick-started my fascination with mobile applications and analytics. This project was one of the very first projects where I had the chance to apply design-thinking principles as part of a business intelligence initiative. And ever since then, I never looked back. 

Disclaimer: All opinions expressed in this interview are those of the interviewee and do not reflect the opinions of any organization.

#innovationmoment

“…I designed and developed SAP’s first internal mobile analytics dashboard for the office of the CEO. At the time, Bill McDermott was our CEO at SAP. When he began using the dashboard during his presentations, TV appearances, and customer events, I was captivated by how he would not only showcase the technology but also demonstrate firsthand the incredible value that it brought to the C-suite…this was happening during the early days of mobile adoption in Fortune 500 companies…it dawned on me that he wasn’t just showcasing our technology but, more importantly, telling a story. I quickly realized the power of storytelling and building user experiences that empowered it…”

You’ve had an impressive career, from IBM to Hasso Plattner Institute. Can you share what you do as a Strategic and Experience Design Specialist?

As a Strategic and Experience Design Specialist, I uncover user needs and problems to design relevant solutions for users that also address business requirements and long-term strategic goals. This ensures that such solutions are actually desirable and usable while businesses also have the right incentives and benefits to invest in satisfying these user needs.

What is Experience design and how is it relevant for businesses?

There can be a lot of different understandings as to what a (User) Experience (or UX) Designer does and the definitions can vary when you start to look it up online. However, first and foremost, Experience Designers must advocate the needs of the users through user research and testing – usually qualitative. In analyzing these findings, we have a more accurate understanding of the users’ problems and pain points and only then can we start to create solutions to address them. This refers to the point of desirability – whether or not users really need or desire such a solution. There’s another side to Experience Design that focuses on usability by ensuring that a given product, service or system creates a positive and intuitive experience so that users are more likely to use it correctly and/or are happy to continue using it in the future.

One of your goals is to uncover and convert user insights into tangible solutions that not only meet user needs but also business objectives. Can you elaborate on this?

The role of an Experience Designer is about understanding and advocating for users, their needs, problems and pain points to design more relevant solutions. Making these solutions as tangible as possible early in the development process is necessary to better test and validate these ideas with users and iterate based on their feedback. However, addressing users’ needs quite often doesn’t line up with business objectives that are frequently driven by profit and benefits to the business itself. This means that many ideas and solutions need to be explored early on to ensure that some can be found that satisfy both user as well as business needs. Designers today are getting better at understanding and “speaking” business to improve their stakeholder management skills as this also increases the likelihood of getting investment and support for an idea.

Can you share with us the common problems or challenges businesses face in relation to their product offering experience?

Regardless of what size or type of business, the most common challenge or hurdle that I face in delivering a great product experience is budget and time. Quite often you hear a client or senior management saying that there isn’t enough time to do a proper user research phase before development or there isn’t enough budget to do a user test before an idea gets carried forward. This is also usually a result of people either understanding Experience Design at a very superficial level or misunderstanding it completely – expecting aesthetics and visual design to be the full experience and neglecting to see the actual benefits of it. I think an important way to work around this is if people don’t understand Experience Design, then the education of it is needed and this is also where “speaking” business becomes a powerful skill. The benefits of Experience Design then need to be made clear and the only way to communicate this effectively is to “speak their language” of gains and losses.

“Quite often you hear a client or senior management saying that there isn’t enough time to do a proper user research phase before development or there isn’t enough budget to do a user test before an idea gets carried forward.”

Based on your knowledge as a strategic and experience designer, how will you advise businesses offering digital and physical services to improve the experience of their customers around their offering?

The simplest advice to improving product or service experiences is for companies to have regular contact with their customers and to start this as early as possible. Quite often in traditional business models, a lot of ideas and concepts arise from within an organization without any contact with the customer or understanding of their needs.

“The simplest advice to improving product or service experiences is for companies to have regular contact with their customers and to start this as early as possible.”

This leads to creating irrelevant solutions with terrible experiences because all concepts and ideas were developed from unvalidated assumptions. Assumptions are fine to work with, but they need to be recognised as assumptions and should therefore be validated with customers/users through research and testing. This also means working iteratively and being open to changing ideas.

“Assumptions are fine to work with, but they need to be recognised as assumptions and should therefore be validated with customers/users through research and testing.”

Which companies do you admire for the way they designed experiences around their products offering and what particularly stood out to you?

Apple is a clear and obvious choice – at least in the past. They designed smooth, intuitive and seamless experiences within and between their products that customers were and still are willing to pay top dollar for it. AirBnB and Withings are also companies that clearly have a strong focus on good design that has led to a beautiful experience in their products.

“Apple is a clear and obvious choice – at least in the past. They designed smooth, intuitive and seamless experiences within and between their products that customers were and still are willing to pay top dollar for it.”

As an experience design specialist, what is your #Innovationmoment? (something you have done, and feel has really been inspiring)?

My favourite #innovationmoment came from my time as a student at the Hasso Plattner Institute, School of Design Thinking in Potsdam, Germany where we worked with Radioeins, a German radio station regarding the future of radio. Unfortunately, it didn’t get carried very far forward as we were less experienced with stakeholder management but it’s a project that I still hold dear to me as I still believe it would have a lot of impact if implemented properly with a fully dedicated team. The insights that we found from our user research were so powerful and exciting that we were able to get a funding of 30 000 € for 6 months after the course was over to further develop our idea into a Beta version. In the end, it was a desirable idea and there were a lot of potential benefits for radio stations but as I mentioned, due to a lack of experience and also a lack of dedication to the project (pretty much all team members including myself were employed elsewhere at the time and this was merely a side project), it didn’t get carried forward any further after the 6 months. Perhaps I’ll revisit and revitalize the project sometime soon if I have the time!

#innovationmoment

“My favourite #innovationmoment came from my time as a student at the Hasso Plattner Institute, School of Design Thinking in Potsdam, Germany where we worked with Radioeins, a German radio station regarding the future of radio… The insights that we found from our user research was so powerful and exciting that we were able to get a funding of 30 000 € for 6 months after the course was over to further develop our idea into a Beta version.”

Tell us a little bit about your journey to your current position as Founder and Social Business Designer at Creation + Practice. What led you on this path?

I didn’t arrive here consciously, to look backwards rationalises a series of chaotic decisions into a sensible stream of progress. I freelanced as a self-taught designer from High School to Graduate School; stretching my ability, working on increasingly elaborate projects from publicity to publishing to patient management systems for private hospitals.

With each project, I went deeper into how my clients’ businesses worked, their operating environments and how their insides matched their outsides. With more trust, I was given more leeway to inspect their business models and be a critical voice; pushing the discourse higher and farther from ‘Business Design Light’ to ‘Business Design Heavy’ (Tanimoto) under the banner of human-centring operations and sustainability.

I’ve worked on a range of businesses from smart textiles, brick-and-mortar stores in China, aerosol bitters for cocktails, agricultural education in East Africa, the first craft beer for a Taiwanese palette to athletic tourism platforms. Each experience has challenged me to make my practice more robust and adopt a ‘beginner’s mind’.

Within the next few years, I aim to build a venture studio, codifying what I’ve learned in client services and creating a space for venture origination by committee, within its own independent fund to meet citizen success, open source and circular economic ideals.

What are your thoughts on (Business) innovation as it is currently approached around the world?

From the outside looking in, innovation means something different to everyone who uses the term. It could be the opposite of tradition – something completely new – it could be the recontextualisation of a product or service to a new market, or the bundling or decoupling of services as they stand. I think the best tangible examples are ‘leapfrogs’, where a business impels adoption from one technology to an unexpected one several levels of complexity higher. Consider how payments in China jumped from cash to debit digital payments (and the insurance that sits on top of that platform), ‘skipping’ Credit Cards and lo-fi digital wallets.

“… innovation means something different to everyone who uses the term. It could be the opposite of tradition – something completely new – it could be the recontextualization of a product or service to a new market, or the bundling or decoupling of services as they stand.”

What are your key responsibilities as a Social Business Designer?

I work with Founders to help them originate and refine new business ideas, products and services, within the scope of the mission of their organisation. No two projects are the same, and I work across a variety of sectors from Enterprise Technology to Agriculture to Cosmetics and Craft Beer.

The stock definition of a Business Designer is one who originates new venture activity and its ecosystem along the axes of technical feasibility (invention with traditional and/or innovative technology), financial viability (sustainable segments, partners and supply chains) and human-centred desirability (from the margins to centre). I use these axes as a guide to segment and respell Founders as Inventors, Optimisers and Visionaries respectively, reflecting their starting point and the work to be done.

A Social Business Designer takes this further to consider systems, ethical externalities (non-user-centricity, ethical hacking), future speculation, social impact, regulation, intercultural sensitivity and organisational dynamics (can a process survive within a larger organisation?). These are emerging aspects that I’m working to codify and integrate into my practice.

“I think the best tangible examples [of innovation] are ‘leapfrogs’, where a business impels adoption from one technology to an unexpected one several levels of complexity higher. Consider how payments in China jumped from cash to debit digital payments, ‘skipping’ Credit Cards and lo-fi digital wallets.”

What tools do you use when designing for businesses?

Business Design is undergoing a bit of a ‘prime canvas’ moment. Not a week goes by, when someone introduces a new sheet of paper with boxes to better segment and categorise business and impact strategy. The verdict is still out on which are the real winners, but I have my favourites: Julian Cole’s “Planning Dirty” and verynice’s “Models of Impact”, as well as the standard offerings from Strategyser and the “This is Service Design” series.

Aside from those well-heeled tools, I lean heavily on my training in User Research and Area Studies. I use discourse analysis in particular to delineate the boundaries of organisational silos, what makes a user a user and what lies systemically within the remit of a business, product or service.

How would you define innovation based on your experience?

I don’t like using the word “innovation”, as it feels like a false, inconstant idol in an everchanging world, but I consider the benefit of innovation to be the rejuvenation of a business, fully assimilating new technology, toward a path of sustainable development; where no two businesses that innovate can arrive there by the same, replicable, linear means.

“[My favourite Business Design Tools are]: Julian Cole’s “Planning Dirty” and verynice’s “Models of Impact”, as well as the standard offerings from Strategyzer and the “This is Service Design” series.”

How do you handle factors that hinder innovation within your (clients’) organizations?

Innovation is often placed at odds with the tradition or heritage of the company or industry that I work with, which is not always a good thing. Many companies downplay their own strengths to take risks on what might come next. As I’m bought in as an external to run these processes, I’m often in a position to throw out the rulebook, and that can be a mistake. The best collaboration is in the open, when all stakeholders get the opportunity to participate in the work we’re doing.

“Innovation is often placed at odds with the tradition or heritage of the company or industry that I work with, which is not always a good thing. Many companies downplay their own strengths to take risks on what might come next.”

Does your team run ideation sessions, problem solving sessions and the like? If so, can you shed light on some of your processes?

I’m always a little weary of giving too much attention or weight to a set process when it comes to ideation and problem solving. Almost all of the best hypotheses and solution in my working career have arisen in the most incidental phases; after the meeting is formally over or a stray insight when my team and I are looking at a problem fresh. More generally, our sessions are to create the parameters of play; aligning on what we want to achieve, and not worrying about how we get there; giving people permission to go deep, be creative and intellectual (which looks different in different people).

Which companies do you admire most for their approach to innovation? Can you share what caught your attention?

There are quite a few companies and groups that really bring attention to the field. Most recently, I’ve been really impressed with the in-roads Board of Innovation have made to demystify what innovation looks like to corporates, and the opensource initiatives taken by verynice to bring best practices to the firms that need it most.

What advice would you give to professionals looking to improve their career in business design, strategy or innovation leadership?

Look beyond the industry that you currently work in and learn from other fields. Business Design is already a diverse field, people arrive from all over the place: finance, other parts of design, product management and marketing; prior experience in another field actually enriches your practice.

Make it your responsibility to raise your level of discourse; write to develop your language (as a translator from needs to action), find depth (mediate ambiguity and complexity) and explore emotional intelligence; three things that will make you indispensable.

What #innovationmoment are you most proud of in your role as Business Designer?

It might seem counterintuitive, but my most proud moments have been the times I’ve shut down or said ‘no’ to a superfluous initiative, and pushed my clients to follow their values over the next trend. A sustainable business starts and ends with its values, with a model that brings these values to life.

If you could build a company from the ground up, what systems would you take from existing companies across the globe to build yours?

My clients and I constantly review our systems and operating procedures for better ways of collaborating. R/GA is a great example of a long-standing business that regularly interrogates its own existence, mission statement, business model and objectives for the short-, medium- and long-term – it’s an anomaly that has become increasingly relevant in our era of acceleration.

New startups, social enterprises and small businesses have an understated advantage over their forebears – they can freely experiment and adopt new systems. It’s something few of the clients I’ve worked with really appreciate. It’s very easy to slip into unnecessary administrative overhead, multi-platform anarchy and always-on synchronous communication. It takes a great deal of restraint to fashion good systems that maximise time for deep work, reflection and executive function to work less, with less duress and more creativity.

In my next venture, I’m considering these principles from the outset:

1. To be strict on the number of platforms; to factor in their switching cost and expiry dates from the outset – considering ‘Rundles’ like Microsoft Teams and Basecamp.

2. To reduce context (Erin Meyer’s term in ‘The Culture Map’) and build a multimedia knowledge base that operates as the ‘single source of truth’ for knowledge work – Notion, Coda, AirTable and Figma.

3. To favour open source over proprietary formats – we’ve lost some great tools along the way, so make sure everything can be ported to your next tool.

4. To be transparent and open source with as much of the work as possible to create information symmetry with those our work impacts and for others to build on our work abundantly.

5. To make privacy a centrepiece beyond the realm of regulation, collecting data thoughtfully and respectfully; e.g. don’t use ‘single-pixel tracking’ just because it’s easy.

6. To centre employee experience within our systems, affording autonomy and agency to teams to create better systems for themselves and others – akin to Stripe’s Operating Principles.

7. Appreciate that your employees are with you for a short time (in the grand scheme), make their time with you valuable, and be present to help them grow.

#innovationmoment

“but my most proud moments have been the times I’ve shut down or said ‘no’ to a superfluous initiative, and pushed my clients to follow their values over the next trend.”

Tell us a little bit about your journey to this current position as Group Head of Digital & Data. What led you onto this path of Digital Innovation?

I’m a heavy user of tech products – I have close to 200 apps on my phone. I started this journey because I truly believe that technology can solve our problems as a continent from financial inclusion to poverty to low literacy levels to high unemployment and so on to every single person in the economy. I started my journey at KPMG where I was part of the team that set up management consulting in East Africa. I’ve also been at OLX Kenya, Cheki Kenya as the CEO where I founded Timam Cars before joining UAP Old Mutual as the Group Head of Digital & Data.

“I started this journey because I truly believe that technology can solve our problems as a continent from financial inclusion to poverty to low literacy levels to high unemployment and so on to every single person in the economy.”

What are your thoughts on innovation as it is currently in Kenya?

Amazing time to be in Kenya and the greater East Africa! [The market is] educated, young, risk-taking, with the availability of disposable incomes, great skills, and amazing support from the government for innovation, along with a growing appetite from investors to invest in unproven but innovative business models.

What are your key responsibilities as the current Group Head of Digital & Data at UAP OLD Mutual Group?

3 key things:

1. Leading the digital transformation for the group.
2. Exploring new opportunities/ventures where the group can invest in.
3. Build a really ‘smart’ group of businesses through advanced business analytics, AI, robotics, etc.

How would you define innovation based on your experiences at UAP OLD Mutual Group?

[Innovation to me is the] practical application of a new solution to an existing, hidden or future problem.

How do you handle factors that hinder innovation within your organization?

A couple of things;

• Be a great listener
• Focusing what the customer & business needs are, not what I think their needs are 
• Continuous and open communication, both when we have great wins and when we make mistakes
• Identifying key enablers who can act as your advocate
• Generally…be a nice guy; someone people actually like being around.

How do you factor your users/customers as you drive for innovation at your organization?

•  Continuously talking to them every day
•  Being very analytical, fact-based decision-making process (numbers don’t lie).
•  Focusing on truly understanding the need of customers and the emotive drive behind it.

“[One of the ways we factor our customers as we drive for innovation] is by focusing on truly understanding the need of customers and the emotive drive behind it.”

Which companies do you admire most for their approach to innovation? Can you share what caught your attention about their approach to innovation?

a. SpaceX & Tesla – their boldness; they’re high-risk takers

b. Microsoft – for their high operational excellence

c. Cellulant – created for Africans by Africans

d. Safaricom – their power of scale & great partnership.

All the way from Hamburg, Germany, Design and Innovation Manager Tommaso Martucci of INDEED Innovation speaks on how design brings about innovation, and shares how he and his team design successful products.

Tell us a little bit about your journey to this current position as Innovation and Design Manager at Indeed-Innovation. What led you onto this path of design and innovation?

I’m a designer by training, even though I’ve experienced it in all its forms. I’ve got a bachelor’s in Industrial Design, then a Diploma in Landscape Design, a first Master in Service Design and a second Master in Business Design. It would get even more complex to mention all my working experiences. But the long story short is that they are all very different. During these 10 years, I lived/worked in multiple cities and countries. And when INDEED proposed [for] me to come back to Europe, [it] seemed [like] a very interesting challenge to me, and a month after their call, I was in Hamburg.

What are your thoughts on innovation as it is currently approached around the world?

Innovation is a big word, it comes along with evolution, so it’s part of our natural process as humans, we evolve naturally. The current approach, from the perspective of a designer, is related to the general understanding of the design process. Meaning: innovation as a result of the design process.

And it’s a great time for designers. Some words like “Design Thinking” and “Human-centered” have been spread all around, and the more they become “buzzwords” the more they function as important tools of communication, so as to reach a broader user target.

“And it’s a great time for designers.”

What are your key responsibilities as an Innovation and Design Manager?

The most beautiful aspect of my job is to keep moving between tasks of a doer and a thinker. This approach enables me to connect the dots between the daily job of the designers and the value that clients perceive for them.

Mostly, my effort is to make my clients aware of their full capabilities, which often means turning their requests to us into a structured briefing, to aim for higher purposes. Nowadays designers must share the same perspective of their clients, it’s important to go out of the “design bubble”, that’s the only way of effective consulting.

“The most beautiful aspect of [design] is to keep moving between tasks of a doer and a thinker. This approach enables me to connect the dots between the daily job of the designers and the value that clients perceive.”

How would you define innovation based on your experience?

Back in the day, when working on projects for innovation, it was easy to read articles about the world in the next 50 years. Nowadays, when defining a roadmap for an innovation project, the most common horizons move between 1-3 years, 3-5 years or 5-7 years, in some rare cases it goes up to 10-15 years. But in any industry, we are all conscious about the speed of transformation which prevents us to foresee a future which is too far away. Antoine Lavoisier wrote, “Nothing is created, everything is transformed”. Thus innovation could be any transformation that changes our lives for better, not in a hugely impactful way, but in the small daily things. Regarding the nature of innovation, for sure we notice a shift of focus, from technology-driven to technology as a tool to support people.

“…innovation could be any transformation that changes our lives for better, not [only] in a hugely impactful way, but in the small daily things. Regarding the nature of innovation, for sure we notice a shift of focus, from technology-driven to technology as a tool to support people.”

How do you handle factors that hinder innovation within your organization?

By definition, Design Thinking is a “creative problem solving” process, which implies the presence of a problem. Thus it’s important to change perspective, to see the problems as opportunities, not as obstacles. Every unfilled gap is an opportunity to do better.

Does your team run ideation sessions, problem-solving sessions and the like? If so, can you shed light on some of your processes?

We tend to do what we preach for our clients, so we are based on multi-disciplinary teams that adapt their knowledge from case to case. Luckily there is no recipe for good results, otherwise, it would be boring. We love to host clients at our office to involve them in every activity, it helps us to discover the little details behind the briefs, and it helps them to understand what we do before handing anything over to them.

Which companies do you admire most for their approach to innovation? Can you share what caught your attention about their approach to innovation?

I believe that companies are made by individuals, there are leaders and there are teams. I pursue many great minds related to the design world and [those unrelated]. I feel that they are those who make a difference. I tend to admire and respect those who can deliver great thoughts and results over the promotion of brands. To name all of those great individuals it would be a long list, but if you follow my daily posts on Linkedin with the hashtag #timeforreading, you’ll read about many of them.

“ I tend to admire and respect those who can deliver great thoughts and results over the promotion of brands.”

What advice would you give to professionals looking to improve their career in innovation management, strategy or innovation leadership?

Do what you love. And if you don’t know what it is, keep searching, keep experimenting, keep trying. Once you find it, share it, and fall in love also with something else. If it’s really hard to find something, then look for someone, a visionary, someone who inspires and motivates you, someone who moves you with words. And follow that leader.

What #innovationmoment are you most proud of in your role as an Innovation and Design Manager for Indeed-Innovation?

I’m proud of all projects, but in particular of those cases when we developed entire ecosystems. More in detail, to convince and guide our clients in scaling up, so in moving from the development of a single product to the entire ecosystem made of multiple touchpoint, such as physical products with services and digital products. Some of those projects are ongoing, but some others have already their first touchpoint displayed on our website.

#innovationmoment

“…moving from the development of a single product to the entire ecosystem made of multiple touchpoint, such as physical products with services and digital products.”

Tell us a little bit about your journey to this current position as Co-founder and CEO of Supermart.ng, what led you on to this path?

My journey in E-commerce & technology started with Jumia in 2012, prior to Jumia I had worked in the banking industry for 5 years. At Jumia, I was the Chief Operating Officer for the first 2 years before I and my co-founder Rafael stepped aside to start Supermart, which we run now for the last 5 years. That’s the history in a nutshell.

So, what led you to this path? When Supermart came out it really was seen as an innovation because there was this need, and no one thought of it or put it together till you guys came on the scene. Can you share how that happened, how the idea came about and how you have built till now?

Well, when we were at Jumia, we realized that no one was doing groceries. I think there were a couple of smaller companies doing online grocery retail. Jumia wasn’t doing it and they hadn’t done it in any other markets anywhere else in the world.

We worked long hours and closed late, so this was a problem we had ourselves. When I had to go to the supermarket, it would be a pain finding parking, spending time in the store, and queuing. It just wasn’t something I wanted to do.

I guess I had also gotten used to online grocery retail while I lived abroad, so for me, it was something that was fairly straight forward. I thought to myself, ‘this is something that can work here locally, especially with all the traffic situation we have.
So we thought about all those things and said this is an area we can add value in, it’s probably one of the most difficult areas of e-commerce, but for us, over the years we’ve continued to learn, to innovate and continued to try new things. We are happy every time we have better service than in the previous months and year.

Looking at Nigeria’s current landscape, what are your thoughts on innovation in Nigeria today?

I think of innovation as new ways of doing things, trying to enhance processes, being more efficient and effective. In that regard, when I look at many companies we interact with, I think too many companies are too slow to try things, too many companies are still stuck in regimented ways of doing things.

“When I think about innovation, I see it as thinking of new ways of doing things, trying to enhance processes, being more efficient and effective. In that regard, when I look at many companies we interact with, I think too many companies are too slow to try things, too many companies are still stuck in regimented ways of doing things.”

For us at Supermart.ng, I can’t count the number of things we’ve tried over the years, we get an idea, we start it, we stop it [if it’s not working].

For example, recently we started selling groceries from the UK, we launched the service on Monday, but the idea came 3 or 4 weeks ago and literally 3 weeks later, we launched that new service.

Today, we have 2000 additional products from UK supermarkets. I can’t count many other things we have started over the years; some we’ve started, and we’ve stopped, some we’ve started, and we’ve carried on with us, but the most important thing is we have to be quick and nifty. I have discovered most companies are too just too slow and this is beyond technology or start-ups.

“I can’t count the many other things we have started over the years; some we’ve started, and we’ve stopped; some we’ve started, and we’ve carried on with us, but the most important thing is we have to be quick and nifty. I have discovered most companies are too just too slow and this is beyond technology or start-ups.”

What are your key responsibilities as CEO of Supermart.ng on a day to day basis?

I have about 10 reports that I review on a daily basis. Every morning I look at things like sales, performance reports on our marketing initiatives, operations report, customer service issues, and based on those reports I can react to specific things or think of a more holistic way of solving a long-term problem.

I start my day with those 10 reports and depending on the situation, for example with the UK project we just launched, I would be a lot more involved for the first 2-3 weeks, just making sure that things are working properly but once we have things settled, I take my foot off the paddle and look at something else.

So, it’s providing direction, guidance, making sure the various team leads are doing what they should be doing but again to me, it’s just about having a process that works. For instance, we have a lot of documented processes for almost all departments, even simple things like approving payments, there are certain things that we should see before a payment can be approved at various approval levels and if those approvals are not there, the payment will not be made. Right down to how we pick items, and how we deliver, what we say to customers. We have those processes identified, it’s only when there’s a deviation from those processes, that I now step in and ask questions.

All the guys I work with know that about me, I didn’t study marketing or operations, I’m not a programmer, but what I’ll always do, is ask questions. The guys know I will always ask those questions, so it comes, they must be ready for answers.

These questions come every day, I will always see things that can be changed or improved, or where someone has been out of line, and take into consideration how we fix them.

What would you say are factors that hinder innovation in your organization?

I think for me, it would be good to have more innovative thinking across the entire organization, from top to bottom. We’ve tried to create that kind of open environment where everyone can speak up. But I find out that sometimes even though you try to give that message, you find out that people still keep things to themselves. Sometimes, cause they’re not sure how it would be received, or they just feel, I’m just here to collect salaries, if ‘oga’ says to do it, do it fine, and if he doesn’t, then ‘oh well’.

We can do more to get more people coming up with ideas and suggestions. One thing we came up with, about a month ago was remote working. I thought to myself, do we need to be in this central place called ‘office’ to do our jobs? And the answer was ‘no’.

I asked the team leads to go and figure out how we’d still manage the company and make sure everyone is still performing. What kind of reporting structure do we have? How do we ensure that people are still getting their jobs done? Are people still motivated to come into the office? Are they still disciplined to get out of bed at the same time and at work at a certain time? How do we communicate, is it Skype, WhatsApp, e-mails? So, I just left it with them and went on to do other things.

So, at the next town hall meeting, we had one of the junior guys in the company who said, ‘why don’t we consider doing remote work? Within a week, we agreed that we would start it, and for the last 4 weeks now, we’ve been doing 3 days away and 2 days in the office. We will continue that to the end of the year, at year-end we will review to see whether it’s been working well.

We’ll then ask, can we now do it on a full-time basis, and have more social activities that compensate for the physical time that we don’t spend with each other. We can have team lead meetings once a week for a few hours and at another time, we can have a social activity, say to go out for drinks or maybe go to the cinema, to build a level of camaraderie within the team.

So we will go with this experiment till the end of the year, then in January, we can decide whether we will continue or go back to working 5 days a week, or whether we’ll decide, ‘hey it’s working so well, let’s get rid of the office.’

How do you factor your users and customers as you push the envelope at your company?

For a long time, I think our tech team was just working on too many different things that were not properly articulated, in the last two months we decided to work on just 2 things:

1. Things that bring operational efficiency
2. Things that bring customers to the site and attract them to shop.

Which companies globally or in Nigeria do you admire for how they innovate or operate?

I don’t know if there’s any one company in particular but if you’ve read my book you probably know that I observe things a lot. It may be one person or one thing I learn from somebody else.

I don’t think there’s any particular company whose mode of operation ticks all the boxes for me.

Not too long ago, I used to run a monthly speaker series program, where I invited CEOs to come talk to young professionals. One of the guys that came, arrived maybe 45mins before the interview.

I said ‘wow you are really early’, he responded that he doesn’t like to waste time, if he wants to do anything he does it quickly. He says ‘yes’ quickly and he says ‘no’ quickly. That mind-set stayed with me up until now, and it’s how I run my personal life and business. I apply it to simple things, like when job candidates come for interviews, I always tell the HR Guy, ‘let them come in and go quickly. ‘Don’t have many people come in and wait, when you know you’ll interview them one after the other.

So that essence of speed of executing, not really wasting time on things is one of the key ethos by which we run the business.

We’ve had a lot of people who have joined the team and left to what I guess we would call ‘bigger companies’, say that they really learned entrepreneurship and business at Supermart, because yes bigger companies are good, but the speed in which things are done and the level of detail in how they are done is completely different to the way they’re done in those bigger organizations.

You gave a lot of advice in your book, ‘Working on a Dream: Lessons in life and business’, what advice would you give professionals who want to grow in areas of business strategy and innovation?

Read my book (LOL). We are always learning, I guess nobody has all the answers, as long we have an open mind to learn as we talk to people. But I think more important than learning is implementing. We like to listen, we listen with one ear and it comes out from the other ear, we don’t actually practice all the things we talk about.

Some big companies are just too slow in their mode of operation, many of these guys have gone to the top business schools both locally and abroad. I am sure they have learned about building proper structures, you don’t need to wait for the MD to be physically in the office to make a payment or to decide if we are doing a, b, c, d or e.

There’s this one company we went to recently where they actually wanted to pass a memo to the MD, I thought to myself, ‘using the MEMO just shows that there’s something wrong here.’

What #innovationmoment are you most proud of at Supermart.ng?

There are so many things we’ve done so it’s hard to keep track.

I guess probably the most recent one is around remote working. Before we started, a couple of people I spoke to said it’s not going to work, you are wasting your time, guys won’t be committed, they would be doing other things.

But we found people are actually working and even I, I find that I’m working more hours than when I go to the office and that didn’t require any significant change from us. All the tools were well placed to start this. Yes, there are a couple of areas and 1 or 2 people who are not quite keeping up, but I think by and large we are happy with the progress.

It makes it lighter, a lot more efficient, just a better work-life balance so that people who were spending 4-5 hours in traffic daily, that’s now gone.

Tell us a little bit about your journey to this current position as Group Head of Strategy at Consolidated Hallmark Insurance (CHI). What led you onto this path of Strategy?

I have always wanted to be a strategist because of my passion for finding solutions in difficult situations and solving complex issues. Hence, I always looked out for roles that will give me that leverage.

I started off my career at C2G Consulting. From C2G, I moved to KPMG advisory services, PwC, Phillips Consulting and FMDQ Securities Exchange as the Head of Strategy.

I am currently the Head, Strategy and Corporate Planning at Consolidated Hallmark Insurance Group where I am responsible for driving the business transformation and innovative strategies for the company and its subsidiaries.

That’s quite an interesting journey Ayo, Kindly share with us your thoughts on innovation as it is currently in Nigeria?

We still have a long way to go when it comes to innovation in Nigeria. Although we can see some traction in the technology space, a lot can still be done and this has to be supported with the right policy from the government to enhance local content and create an enabling environment for entities trying to innovate.

“We also need a transformation minded government that can lead to massive transformations in various key sectors, such transformations are needed as strategic enablers for innovation in Nigeria. For example, broadband infrastructure, transport, power, etc.”

What practical solution(s) can you suggest in tackling this innovation problem in Nigeria?

There are about 55 tech hubs in Nigeria, which is just behind South Africa with the highest number of hubs in Africa. I believe Nigerian organizations and Government need to latch on to these increased activities in these hubs for the development of innovative ideas to drive the required growth and transformation in the economy.

There is also a need for a paradigm shift in the thought processes amongst our leaders, as the current thought patterns in the corporate and public space, are inhibiting innovative growth. Therefore, there needs to be increased collaboration/support between the younger drivers of innovation in the corporate world and the older business/government leaders to enable increased adoption of innovation.

What are the major challenges affecting strategy and innovation teams today, and how can these problems be solved?

One of the major challenges affecting strategy and innovation teams today is getting Management commitment to innovation and to the effective implementation of innovative ideas. It is oftentimes difficult to get the management (especially the baby boomers) thoughts to be in alignment with contemporary innovative ideas, as they are more comfortable with conservative concepts.

One of the ways this may be managed is to oftentimes develop ideas that somewhat highlights immediate benefits whilst still stressing the long-term benefits of the innovations. It is important also to ensure your innovations are void of ambiguity and factors the realities of your audience; in order to get their buy-in.

What are your core responsibilities as the Head of Strategy at Consolidated Hallmark?

I am primarily responsible for ensuring the implementation and execution of the company’s strategies to ensure the company achieves its strategic goals. I supervise four strategic business units viz Strategy, Research and Development, Budgeting and Budgetary Controls, Process and Product Innovation to support the company’s growth.

How would you define innovation based on your experiences?

How do you handle factors that hinder innovation within your organization?

We try to turn every obstacle to innovation, [by seeing it] as an opportunity to think deeply and innovate around the obstacles. We don’t allow any factor(s) to hinder us when it comes to innovating.

“For me, based on my experiences, innovation is about either continuously improving on your products and processes to improve the performance of your offerings to your customers, or totally creating new product classes targeted at new or existing markets that is totally different from what your competitors are doing. Such innovations can be disruptive and be the game-changer for you or your business.”

Do you run sessions for ideation or problem-solving? If so, how do you go about it?

How do you factor your users/ customers as you position for strategic growth at your organization?

Our growth trajectory is built around customer satisfaction, as customers are key stakeholders in our strategic goals, and this is why we place huge premium on constant improvement of our internal processes to deliver quality service to our customers.

Which companies do you admire most for their approach to innovation and strategy? Can you share what caught your attention about their approach to innovation?

GTB (Guarantee Trust Bank) is a company I admire so much for their innovation and market entry strategy that focused on the digital, retail and profitable end of the market and significantly altered the face of the banking industry.

What advice would you give to professionals looking to improve their careers in innovation management and strategy?

Be focused and be aggressive with knowledge and personal development as that is what is going to stand you out and prepare you for the right opportunities. It is also important to put in the hours to work and gain valuable experience.