#35 - Democratizing Research in Large Enterprise Companies with Luke Fraser of Stepwise Innovation

This week on the pod, Erin and JH chatted with Luke Fraser, Founder & CEO of Stepwise Innovation (formerly Paper Ventures). They work with insurance innovation and product development teams to get products to market faster. Before starting Stepwise Innovation, Luke worked at IDEO's Design Lab and Liberty Mutual Insurance as a Product Manager.

All in all, he's spent a lot of time working with teams at large enterprise companies, with lots of red tape around user research. He chatted with Erin and JH about how he democratizes research in risk adverse environments, works with legal teams instead of against them, and even how he got teammates from legal to start attending daily standups.

Highlights

[4:16] Luke talks about working on research in 100 year old financial organizations

[6:56] Bringing legal and HR teams along for the ride

[8:01] How to get legal to be a part of your daily standups

[15:23] Getting everyone on the team to understand research findings

[16:44] Research is going to happen, how to pitch it as a less expensive and time consuming option

[20:02] Why participants really participate in research

[22:20] How to work with other teams to do even better research

[25:02] Making the tradeoffs clear when pitching research

[28:45] Luke ❤️s recruitment