d.MBA

One of the best ways to learn about business is to find a topic or product you love, and dive into the business side of it.

Whether it’s your favourite footwear brand, sports team, hotel chain or streaming provider, we all have businesses we’re fascinated by, care about, or affiliate ourselves with. 

And few disciplines make these connections with their favourite brands like designers!

So, in this new d.MBA podcast format, we’re tearing down some designer favourites. From finances to strategies, and from brand-building to competitive areas; we’ll shine a light on the factors that make these businesses work.

For this first episode we put luxury athleisure brand Lululemon under the microscope as Alen, Franz and Tom discuss...

• How Lululemon invented a whole new product category (and owned it!)

• Why timing and finding a niche are so critical to Lululemon’s success

• Challengers in the athleisure space… Who are the competition?

• Lululemon’s incredible growth, and how it outperforms more well known brands

• The threats to Lululemon’s long term success vs the ways it could continue to win

www.d.mba/minimba

AI has rapidly evolved from science-fiction fantasy into a tangible tool that is already impacting our lives and work.

But it’s just the beginning… Not just for end users, but for the businesses hoping to emerge victorious from this new industrial age. But who will come out on top in this race? And what are the business categories they’re competing in?

In this episode of the d.MBA podcast, Alen and Franz delve into the strategies and business models shaping the AI business landscape.

They discuss the emerging sectors in the AI industry, and the organisations best placed to win in each category, including…

• AI solution providers (like OpenAI)

• Data-rich organisations (like Google, Amazon… and governments)

• Hardware manufacturers (like the semiconductor industry)

Tune in to hear Alen and Franz’s predictions… Some of them might surprise you!

www.d.mba

Curious how to make your money work for you as a designer or creative?

Well, you've come to the right place! In this episode, Alen and his guest, Akshan Ish (a design manager at Spotify), have an insightful conversation about mastering the art of financial literacy.

Join them as they cover topics like:

• Personal finance stories and lessons

• Investing in emerging markets

• Navigating financial systems across borders

Alen and Akshan open up about their own journeys with money management, investing, and finding their way through different countries' financial systems. They stress the importance of education and awareness around personal finance, and how it can lead to long-term benefits for creatives.

Akshan, who's not just an expert in design but also has a keen eye for investments, shares his thoughts on investing in India and offers some valuable resources for learning about personal finance.

So, whether you're a designer, a creative, or just someone looking to brush up on financial literacy, this episode is a must-listen.

www.d.mba/minimba

Does the thought of negotiating make you break out in a cold sweat, fellow designer?

Join Alen and our special guest Jo as they explore the ins and outs of negotiation in various contexts, from job offers to client negotiations.

In this episode, Alen and Jo discuss:

• The power of empathy in understanding the other party's perspective and priorities

• Practical application of the framework using a job offer negotiation example

• Uncovering the intriguing similarities between negotiation and business design

Tune in and level up your negotiation game today!

www.d.mba

Are you a faced with a business-related question, but don’t know who to ask for help?

Facing challenges at work as you build your business confidence, and need some expert advice?

Well, the d.MBA’s very own Alen and Franz are here to help! 

Welcome to the d.MBA Mailbag, our new podcast format where Alen and Franz turn Agony Uncles as they tackle anonymous questions from the d.MBA community. 

In episode one our expert hosts offer sage advice on…

• How to influence business strategy as a design leader

• Ways to make business metrics more fun (no, really!)

• Methods to uncover business opportunities around your personal passions

• AI-proofing your career as a designer

Do you need Alen and Franz’s help? Submit an anonymous question by dropping us an email at [email protected]! 

Seen enough AI tool renderings of fantasy avatars, futuristic skyline designs, or unicorns playing tennis? Franz Blach certainly has.

As tools like Chat GPT, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion continue to capture our imaginations and headlines, they’ve also prompted an existential crisis in our industry. Could AI make us redundant?

Franz doesn’t think so. Strategic decisions still need our expertise, and the wicked problems AI can help us solve are orders of magnitude more ambitious than those tennis playing unicorns.

In this interview Alen sits down with Creative Director at Pinterest Franz Blach to discuss the biggest opportunities for AI in the design industry, and the surprising business models that could emerge as these technologies mature. The conversation explores: 

• How designers can prepare for the AI revolution

• The ambitious, wicked problems AI can help us tackle

• How attribution business models can make AI profitable and equitable

• Why we should embrace the opportunity for creative chaos!

www.d.mba

Jim Barksdale, a former CEO of Netscape, once famously proclaimed there are “only two ways to make money in business: one is to bundle; the other is unbundle.”

Bundling is the business of rolling up products or services into packages, usually at a lower cost than buying them individually. Think meal deals, all-inclusive holidays, and software suite subscriptions that throw in all manner of bonus products for “free”.

Who can resist great deals like these?

Well, sometimes bundling comes at a cost. Both customers and regulators might take issue with a strategy that on the surface offers great value, but can have major drawbacks for choice, competition, and quality.

In this episode we unpick both bundling and unbundling, as Alen and Franz discuss:

• The benefits and drawbacks of each strategy for businesses and customers

• Famous examples of bundling and unbundling we can learn from

• How much impact design has in unbundled vs bundled scenarios

www.d.mba

For our latest episode we put our new business school quiz to the test, with our unsuspecting producer Tom Prior in the hot-seat.

When it comes to understanding business terminology and concepts, it can regularly feel like our knowledge is under the spotlight. 

• What does that business terminology mean?

• Should I know what that stakeholder was referring to?

• I’ve heard that acronym before… what the hell is ROI?

In these situations we might want to phone a friend or ask the audience. But what if you could go into your next stakeholder meeting and have the confidence of a bit more business knowledge?

Well, to get your started we’ve put together 7 questions for designers who want to start their journey towards business confidence.

Want to play along with Alen, Franz and Tom? Head to the multiple-choice quiz now and see how you get on!

Sept 15th, 2022.

The day Adobe announced its intention to acquire Figma for an eyewatering $20Bn was also a day of mourning for much of the design community. Our industry’s main tool was falling into the hands of a brand many have grown increasingly skeptical of.

Sad times.

But at a company retreat in rural Spain, the team at Penpot was rejoicing. Their nimble, open-source design tool is an alternative to the monopoly. An innovative upstart in the face of a seemingly greedy, toxic brand.

But how does an open-source tool with a tiny market share face up to the might of Adobe?

In this interview with Penpot's CEO Pablo Ruiz-Múzquiz, we uncover:

• How Penpot’s developer-inclusive product strategy can be an engine of growth

• Why a “Tax the controller” subscription model can make open source a profitable business model

• Using the ‘value created vs value captured’ ratio to create a compelling pricing proposition

www.d.mba

Discounting and Tesla are two words you never hear together.

Elon Musk famously wrote in an email to Tesla staff that “There can never – and I mean never – be a discount on a new car coming out of the factory in pristine condition… The acid test is that if you cannot explain to any customer who paid full price why other another customer didn’t without being embarrassed, then it is not right.”

So Tesla’s recent decision to deeply discount across its product range has many scratching their heads. Why is Tesla doing this now? What could it indicate about the state of the business? Will it have a long-term effect on their brand and position in the market?

These are questions we dive into as part of the latest Business Design Jam. In this episode we cover:

• Why a business like Tesla might choose to discount

• The pros and cons of discounting

• 5 considerations before choosing to cut prices

• Why price is so intrinsically linked to UX

• How designers can add value to the pricing process - it’s not all maths!

In this episode of the d.MBA podcast, we explore the exciting and rapidly-evolving field of artificial intelligence and its potential impacts on the design community and the future of business. We discuss:

• The latest advances in AI technology and how it is transforming the way we design products, services, and experiences.

• We also delve into the potential risks and opportunities that AI presents for businesses and designers, and offer insights on how to navigate this rapidly-changing landscape.

Join us as we delve into the fascinating world of AI and its implications for the future of design and business.

The episode’s description was written by an AI chatbot ChatGPT. Impressive, right?

How can we best align the goals of employees and owners?

It’s an age-old problem of a principal-agent relationship. But there is a promising trend that could really align incentives between employees and owners. It’s by making employees owners!

We decided to invite two d.MBA alumni, Sandra Fernandez and Chris How to share how employee ownership works in their companies.

We talked about:

• what even are employee-owned companies,

• what are the benefits and drawbacks for employees and companies,

• and the advice Sandra and Chris would give to others who are in the position to suggest or adopt the employee ownership program.

www.d.mba

In the latest Designer in Nature Talking Business, we are hosting Elisabeth Graf, a service designer, innovation coach, and facilitator. And a d.MBA alumna!

Lilly shared how she got into design and learned about the importance of a business concept called opportunity costs. Along the way, we also discussed how she negotiated her salary and got a 50% raise only 3 months after being hired, and why her most hated business buzzword is MVP.

According to the Oxford dictionary, a moat is “a deep, wide ditch surrounding a castle, fort, or town, typically filled with water and intended as a defence against attack”.

Ok, basically some kind of defense around the castle. So, how does this concept translate to business? And design work?

Martyn Reding, chief design officer at Upzelo and former head of design at Virgin Atlantic, shared how he learned about economic moats and how he uses the concept in designing digital products.

Let’s take a moment of silence. Adobe is acquiring Figma. Judging by Adobe’s previous acquisitions this is surely the end of Figma’s best days, right? But Adobe is promising to keep Figma independent! Should we believe Adobe?

But let’s also celebrate. The founder of Patagonia is giving away his company to fight the climate crisis. He is setting a beautiful example of how companies can shift their main stakeholder from stockholders to the society and planet. But it also sets a dangerous precedent that other billionaires could exploit.

In this episode, we cover:

• why is Adobe really acquiring Figma,

• is Adobe likely to keep Figma independent,

• and how Patagonia’s news is a beautiful and dangerous precedent for other billionaires.

www.d.mba/mini-mba

Most of us have already tried to offset the carbon footprint of our consumption. Maybe you’ve paid to offset your flight, a parcel delivery, or even production of a product you bought. And it made you feel good, right?

Well, this episode will make you feel a bit worse. Sorry. But if you are ready to take the red pill listen in and we’ll share:

• how governments try to force certain industries and companies into decreasing pollution,

• why do some companies voluntarily offset their carbon footprint,

• and why, unfortunately, neither of these two paths is currently effective.

When you hire a designer to help you on a project, you don't expect them to say: "What if we don't focus on users here?". 

Franz shared his story of working on a client project that benefitted from designing for suppliers, not customers. To make his point for focusing on suppliers he used a tool called a value chain.

Tune in to Designers in Nature Talking Business, our new podcast format where designers (in nature) share their stories of how they learned or used their favorite business tools. And learn what is a value chain and how you can use it too!

Recently, you may have heard that money is getting more expensive. But how can the money be more expensive? Money is, well, just money.

To clarify this business lingo, Alen and Franz break down the current business environment and share what sets the price of money.

We talked about:

• what cheap and expensive capital even means,

• why is money now getting more expensive,

• and what implications this has on the business world.

It’s usually a bad sign when currencies take over news. It was no different this July 13th when the news broke that one euro is worth exactly one dollar for the first time in twenty years.

The US dollar has been gaining strength against other currencies over the last six months due to various reasons, which we cover in detail in this episode.

But the question is: Who benefits from a strong dollar. A strong dollar is good for US companies, right?

Well… It is not that simple. Listen in to learn

• what are the most common factors why currencies fluctuate,

• who benefits from a strong US dollar,

• and which companies and individuals will be harmed by it?

Working as a freelancer comes with opportunities and challenges. One of these challenges is how you position yourself to get the clients you love working with. And secondly, how do you price your services so you can survive and thrive.

We invited two d.MBA alumni and design freelancers (well, they prefer the term contractors - more about that in the show), Tom Prior and James Bickerton to share their experience.

We talked about:

• how James charges $7,500 for a 90-minute workshop

• when being a specialist makes more sense than being a generalist

• and how the future of freelance work could be equity pay.

There is a saying in business that if a company is trying to prove that it is a monopoly, then it is not one. But if a company is trying to prove that it is not a monopoly, it may very well be.

Holding a monopoly gives a company an unfair advantage, which is good for the company but usually bad for consumers and society as less (or no competition) leads to less (or no) innovation.

Lately, Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple are all facing legal actions to hinder their monopolistic position. So, in this Business Design Jam, we talked about:

• what exactly is a monopoly,

• how common business practices may lead to a monopoly,

• and what impact market-dominating positions have on customers and society.

www.d.mba

Surely, most of us would agree that a 4-day work week is a good idea, right? Early research shows no drop in productivity, and a big increase in employee well-being. So, why hasn’t it been more widely adopted?

At the d.MBA, we’ve been running a 4-day work week for the last four years. So, we thought we would comment on some common concerns about the setup and share our perspective.

Tune in to learn the most common arguments against the 4-day work week, and learn from our story how you could propose an experiment in your team or company.

The prices of tech companies have fallen dramatically. Facebook, Netflix, Google, Apple, and Amazon are all down between 20 and 80% since their record highs. Yikes.

Everyone is freaking out. But why? How does a market crash affect companies and us working for them? How does this affect designers?

In this Business Design Jam, we talked about:

• the recent (mini?) market crash in the tech sector,

• why Netflix’s stock price is down almost 80%,

• and what Netflix can (and plans to) do about it.

To read more about the profit tree, which was mentioned in the episode, check out this guide.

Have you ever hired a freelancer and paid them per hour?

And did you have the feeling that they are extending their scope of work so they could charge you more?

Then, you have already experienced misaligned incentives, which are one of the biggest challenges and opportunities for companies. They can hurt relationships within companies and damage partnerships with outside collaborators.

In our latest podcast episode, we explore how incentives affect the work of designers and why we are in a unique position to help companies better align incentives.

Business design is already pretty common among design agencies but not so much in product companies. So, we were excited to talk to Andrew Whelan, a Business Design Director at the D-Ford London Lab, where he leads a diverse and multi-skilled team tackling some of the biggest business model opportunities in the auto and mobility industry. We covered:

• what the role of business designers at D-Ford entails,

• Andrew’s favorite business design tools,

• and how to make the case for the business design discipline.

Last week, we launched new school certificates. Using a combination of generative art and blockchain, we created several hundred unique certificates so that each student can receive a piece of art that is wall-worthy and trustworthy. To learn more about the project check out the blog post with visual materials. In this podcast episode, I spoke with Emil from design studio Ljudje, which helped us bring these beautiful certificates to life. We covered:

• How the certificates were designed and generated,

• how they are minted (you can see the current collection on OpenSea),

• and how many certificates were created and minted.

https://d.mba/blog/school-certificates-for-the-digital-age

In this Business Design Jam, we talked about NFTs (Non-fungible tokens) and what new business models they will enable. Franz Emprechtinger and Alen Faljic covered:

• digital art and recurring revenues,

• fractionalization, distributed ownership, and crowdfunding,

• community and network effects,

• and internet native cooperations - DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations).

www.d.mba

Aarron Walter is Director of Product on the COVID Response team at Resolve to Save Lives. Previously, he was VP of Content at InVision, and founded the UX practice at Mailchimp where he helped grow the product from a few thousand users to more than 10 million. He's the author of a number of books, the latest of which is a second edition of Designing for Emotion.

In this episode, we talked about:

• the business case for emotional design,

• how healthy personal finance lead to better job performance,

• and Aarron learnings from his recently launched podcast Reconsidering.

The opportunity costs are a super important concept for our decision-making process. They describe potential benefits that we miss out on because we decided to do something else. For example, focusing the company’s resources on rebranding instead of product development. In this episode, we will cover:

• how opportunity costs affect decisions taken within companies,

• what are sunk costs and how to avoid sunk cost trap,

• and how we can present design solutions better to get more buy-in from senior stakeholders.

In the guestimation challenge, two contenders make fast estimations with very little data available. This game imitates a real-world scenario, where we need to estimate certain numbers for our projects. For example, when we want to understand the size of our competitors, how much revenue our product or service idea could make, etc.

This time, contenders are two d.MBA mentors Jo Roberts (Senior Business Design Director at Prophet) and Sherif Labib (Business Designer and Senior Advisor at PwC Luxembourg).

Listen in, see how business designers guesstimate, and train your guestimation muscle!

Economies of Scale is one of the most fundamental concepts in business, which define how competitive are our organizations. In this episode, we dive deep into what this concept really is and explain:

• why almost every company wants to grow bigger (and why that is good and bad),

• why investors dislike service companies,

• and how to use the keyword “marginal cost” in your next big meeting.

www.d.mba/course

Yancey Strickler is the cofounder and ex-CEO of Kickstarter, which revolutionized the field of early-stage investments with the crowdfunding model. The company has helped raise over $5 billion for more than 200,000 projects.

After leaving Kickstarter, Yancey became an author and wrote a beautiful book titled This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World. In this book, Yancey lays out how we got to the world where making money became the main and only goal for companies and how we can change that culture through the Bento method.

In this podcast, we go deep into how designers can use the Bento method to raise the quality of their arguments in business conversations.

www.d.mba

Last week, Tesla announced that it will let customers buy their cars with cryptocurrency Bitcoin. We break down the business rationale for this decision and use it as a good excuse to introduce business topics such as:

• three fundamental business documents that designers need to understand (Profit and loss statement, Balance Sheet, and Cashflow statement),

• what is inflation and when it happens,

• and what is the difference between a currency and assets?

This is our first ever Guestimation Challenge!

It’s a game in which we try to make fast estimations with very little data. For example, estimate how many miles of highway does the US have? Players can only use a calculator, pen, and paper to come as close to the correct number as possible. Without the use of their computer or additional resources.

This game imitates a real-world scenario, where we need to estimate numbers for our projects. For example, when we want to understand the size of our competitors, how much revenue our product or service idea could make, etc.

The first two contenders are d.MBA mentors, Martina Skender (Innovation consultant) and Brian Wong (Business Designer at FJORD Accenture).

We recently hosted a webinar Prototyping with Numbers. In this episode, we share an audio snippet of the first part of that webinar, where Alen explains how to create numerical prototypes to uncover the viability and feasibility risks of design concepts.

You can access a video recording of this webinar here https://d.mba/webinar-prototyping-with-numbers

www.d.mba

In this special episode, Alen shares his latest essay on the dilemma between business and design. Many designers are afraid that business literacy will lead them to compromise their values and principles.

Alen shares why this is a false dilemma and why in reality the relationship between the two is actually synergistic!

www.d.mba/podcast/business-savvy-vs-design-values

In the latest Business Design Jam, Alen is joined by two d.MBA mentors, Jo Roberts (Lead business designer at Designit) and Andreea Strachină (business designer expert at PWC IXDS). They talked about:

• circular business models and how to apply them to service businesses,

• how to apply outcome-based pricing to different industries,

• and how Away founders built a billion-dollar startup by redesigning the arena’s value chain.

www.d.mba

Competitor research is important. It helps us learn about our competitors so we can make better decisions. Decisions that lead to more value created for our customers and our organization.

However, when we think about our competitors, we are all making a fundamental logical mistake. We mistake our direct competitors with our only competitors.

For example, BMW is not competing just with Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Tesla, Ford, etc. It’s also competing with airlines, railway companies, and soon even with Hyperloop providers.

In this Mini MBA episode, Franz (program director at d.MBA) and Alen sit down to talk about the concept of Competitive Arenas and how designers can use it in their work.

In the new Business Design Jam, Alen and Franz, discuss the latest business design stories:

• how a Michelin 3-star restaurant is not only surviving but even thriving during the coronavirus lockdown,

• how Universal Studios pioneered a new way to premier movies,

• and how Airbnb forgot that it is servicing two groups of customers.

www.beyondusers.com/podcast

Rita Gunther McGrath is a world-renowned thought leader and a professor at Columbia Business School. She has received the #1 achievement award for strategy from the prestigious Thinkers50 and has been consistently named one of the world’s top ten management thinkers in its bi-annual ranking.

She wrote Discovery-Driven Growth and The End of Competitive Advantage, which are widely used in the business design community.

In this podcast we talked about:

• how and why we should prototype with numbers,

• why the era of sustainable competitive advantage is over,

• and how designers can explain “inflection points” to business leaders.

UX Designer and CEO of Clearleft, Andy Budd curates the Leading Design and UX London conferences and helped set-up The Brighton Digital Festival. Andy is a regular speaker at international conferences like SXSW, An Event Apart and The Next Web.

In this episode, we spoke about:

• the biggest learnings from the last Leading Design conference,

• why and how designers should say no to their managers,

• and the current state of design education.

Maija Itkonen is an industrial designer, successful entrepreneur, innovator, and brand lover. In 2015 she co-founded Gold&Green Foods, the company behind the phenomenal success story of the “perfect protein food” platform and its first product Pulled Oats. Pulled Oats is a new kind of meat alternative based on the Nordic superfood oats, built around the team’s unique scientific knowledge and design thinking under Maija’s leadership.

With Maija, we talked about:

• her rocky path from a design school to starting companies,

• how and why Gold&Green became a nation-wide sensation in Finland,

• and what it means to start and run a purpose-driven startup.

www.d.mba

Eric Quint is Vice President, Chief Brand and Design Officer at 3M, a Fortune 500 company with over $30B in revenue and over 90.000 employees. An industrial designer by training, Eric joined 3M in 2013 to “design the design function” in the company. He grew the design team substantially, built revolutionary 3M Design Center (an incubator for Collaborative Creativity), and helped build the brand platform that catapulted 3M’s brand value among the world’s top 100 brands.

In this episode, we talked about:

• why designers should stop measuring the value of design (and how we can show our worth),

• what it takes to become a Chief Designer Officer (and what does one do as a CDO),

• and why designers need studios as much as scientists need laboratories.

In the fifth Business Design Jam, Alen and Franz (also a mentor in the d.MBA), discuss business design stories such as:

• why IKEA offers 0.99$ hot dogs after you bought furniture for hundreds of dollars,

• how Soul-Cycle created a competitive advantage by designing for their employees instead of customers;

• and why designers should co-create with lead users, not just test after designs are made.

The applications for the next d.MBA program just opened (Monday 27th January 2020). Apply for your spot at www.beyondusers.com/apply

In many companies, designers do not prepare the product roadmap. We are handed a feature list and expected to just do it. But we’ve all been in situations where we felt that what we are working on just isn’t right. But how do you push back?

How do you correctly recognize what to create? Does a hobby runner want a better running shoe? Or do they just want to be faster? Or to lose some weight? If we understand what people really want, we can work on the right solution.

A great framework that helps us with that is Jobs to be Done. It promises to identify the customer jobs (i.e. customer goals), prioritize our product roadmap, and help us better communicate with business colleagues.

To help us better understand this framework, we spoke with Jim Kalbach, a noted author, speaker, and instructor in design, customer experience, and strategy. He is currently Head of Customer Experience at MURAL, the leading online whiteboard. He recently wrote a book The Jobs To Be Done Playbook, which is coming out in early April.

We spoke about:

• Jim’s first encounter with the framework,

• how he uses it in his design work,

• and how it can help us drive product prioritization and business strategy talks.

Design Sprints have become an extremely popular format in businesses. However, many sprint projects never get executed because they are not aligned with the business context.

Tim Höfer is a product design director and head of the design sprint team at the AJ&Smart, which has run sprints for companies like Google, Slack, Lyft, and Lufthansa.

In this episode, we spoke about integrating business thinking with design sprints. We explored:

• how competitive research can completely reshape sprint’s goal,

• why many design sprint projects never get executed,

• and a new sprint format: Strategy Sprint.

In this episode, we share a lesson from the d.MBA course. In this lesson, which is a part of the Business Models module, we introduce ten famous business model patterns. We go through their advantages, disadvantages, and explain when to use them.

We compare e-commerce with brick and mortar models, talk about white label solutions, open-source models, freemium, subscription, razor and blade mode and many more.

If you want to see this lesson's slides click here --> http://beyondusers.com/podcast/business-models

David J Bland is the founder of Precoil to help companies find product market fit using lean startup, design thinking, and business model innovation. David has helped validate new products and businesses at companies such as GE, Toyota, Adobe, HP, Behr and more. David is the co-author of Testing Business Ideas, a Wiley business book with Alexander Osterwalder.

In this podcast, we talked about David’s new book Testing Business Ideas. We covered:

• three types of risks facing your business and product ideas

• how to design experiments for these risks,

• and how you can use experiment sequences to design better products.

www.beyondusers.com/podcast/

Designers are used to using prototypes to test usability and desirability. You put a wireframe in front of a user and you can quickly learn if they like (or know how to use) something.

What if we could do the same for viability? Well, we can. With math. In this episode, you’ll learn how to use simple math to:

• estimate the business impact of your product changes

• calculate in money what value can your project have

• and how you can use that to talk to managers in your company.

Have you ever been told to be more strategic? What does it mean though?

Strategy, unfortunately, has different meanings for different people. It is one of the most widely misunderstood concepts despite being crucial to the success of business and design.

In this episode, we talk about

• a difference between strategy and business strategy,

• what you should do if you find yourself on a strategic project,

• and how to create strategic prototypes.

www.d.mba

Trent and Alen discuss the importance of design research and desktop research from the perspective of business designers.

In this episode, we are covering:

• conducting looking-ins (internal interviews) and looking-outs (customers and outside stakeholders),

• doing desktop research (analyzing industry and competitors),

• using data,

• and much more!

“My name is Jason Barron, and I’m a designer. I’ve always been doodling, sometimes when I shouldn’t - like in class as a kid. Fast-forward 20 years and not much has changed. Except that I decided to put my lifelong doodling habit to work when I received an MBA from a top 40 business school, Brigham Young University.”

Jason is an author of The Visual MBA, a great book explaining all key business school concepts and frameworks through illustrations. It’s a perfect book for all designers who want to grasp basic business concepts in a language that we are well versed in - images.

In this podcast we talked about:

• Jason’s favorite business school concepts,

• if he would recommend other designers to take an MBA,

• and how he decided to publish the book.

Imagine working on the iPhone before its release in 2007. Imagine the number of design decisions to be made. No one knew if this is going to be successful.

Now, imagine working on the iPhone in 2019. Now, the level of design work is completely different, for sure. 

Each product has its lifecycle and its strategic position in the company. If we learn what type of product we work on, we will know where design has the most value.

In this mini MBA episode, I talked about:

• why iPhone is a “cash cow” and iTunes a “dog”,

• the growth-share matrix that helps us categorize our products,

• and what the role of a designer is for each product strategy.

www.d.mba

Customer is king. Especially to designers. We would do everything for them. We fight for what they want and need. But is that always a good idea?

I would argue that it is sometimes self-destructive. That it is against what customers actually want.

Find out more in this mini MBA episode in which we discuss the fundamentals of a business strategy

www.d.mba

This week, I published the Business Design Guide, which introduces business design as a design discipline. In this episode, I present the outline of the guide and share a few stories from my career that led me to write this guide.

I took one topic from the guide and presented it in more detail. What most budding business designers overlook is the importance of a design mindset. So, I share six mindsets that make a business designer, business designer.

https://www.beyondusers.com/guides/what-is-business-design-guide

John Oswald is a business design pioneer. He was the first business designer at fjord where he defined its role and built the team. He is currently a managing director at a strategic design consultancy Method London. With John, we discussed:

• the early days and evolution of the business design,

• five patterns of business design talent,

• how hiring business designers work,

• and how typical business design deliverables look like.

www.d.mba

Imagine you are running a hotel. Who would you rather have as a customer? High value but one-time visitor or an average customer who will keep coming back for many years? It depends, right?

Lifetime Value (LTV) is a concept that can help us determine the business value of our customers and with that understand:

• who is an ideal customer,

• how much they are worth to a business,

• and how much we can spend on acquiring a customer.

In this mini d.MBA episode we cover the definition of lifetime value and its relevance for designers.

When you open a yoga studio, will you hire yoga instructor full-time or will you find a contractor? Will you sign a one year lease for your studio that you can equip the way you want or will you try to rent a pop-up store that gives you more flexibility?

These are all design decisions that entrepreneurs and designers should think about.

In this mini MBA episode, we spoke about:

• the difference between fixed and variable costs

• and calculating a break-even point.

 www.d.mba

In the second mini d.MBA episode, we look at two related business concepts:

• Opportunity Costs

• and Return on Investment (ROI)

If you take a year off from work and do an MBA, this doesn’t just cost you $100k. During that same year, you could be earning your salary. So, your opportunity costs (for that year) are way above $100k.

A freelancer that takes on a project with a 50% discounted rate won’t be able to sell that time to a much better paying corporate gig if it shows up at a later point.

How can we best decide among different opportunities and their costs? One way is calculating ROI.

This is an experimental episode where I present one business concept and explain its relevancy for designers work.

In the first mini d.MBA episode, I talked about cash flow and its importance. It is one of the most common reasons companies go out of businesses. When you run out of money, the game is over.

If you like chocolate, expensive apartment buildings, Walmart, and loans, you will love this episode. You will learn how you can affect the cash flow as a designer and drastically improve the health of your product and business.

The Business Design Jam is back. In the third session, David Schmidt, a business design partner at United Peers, and I discuss four business design topics:

1. how misaligned incentives fundamentally hurt user experience across different industries and what we can learn from Lemonade (the insurance startup from USA),

2. why creating sustainable brands could be the next big wave in business innovation (we talked about Patagonia as an example here),

3. we discussed a question that very few designers and entrepreneurs ask themselves: “how big should my company be” (hint: growing is not always the best answer),

4. and we discussed what separates a successful corporate innovation from the ones that are likely to fail.

If you want to add to our discussion, reach out to us on Linkedin (Alen, David) or Twitter (Alen, David).

Matic Pelcl is a director of product at Celtra, a creative management platform for digital advertising. Matic has gone through the experience of starting as a junior designer to having the proverbial seat at the table today.

In this episode, we spoke about:

• why scalable design is important and when companies should start implementing it,

• what does having a seat at the table mean,

• and how does a design process look like at Celtra?

Watch the video version of the talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxck_k6TIOI

Recently, I gave a talk titled "Good design is good business" at the UX/UI Meetup Berlin. I presented the synthesis of my research on the heritage and purpose of design.

The basic question I was trying to answer is "what is the purpose of design" and "how designers can achieve it". In this talk, I share my answer. 

Jules Ehrhardt is the founder of FKTRY, a creative capital studio aimed at revolutionising how creatives get paid. Jules was previously an owner of USTWO, the pioneer studio that kicked off the digital product studio trend. Jules left USTWO couple of years ago to focus on building one of the first creative capital studios and to create an example of a new business model for creatives, which he laid out in his seminal pieces called State of the Digital Nation 2020 (and 2018).

In the episode, we discussed:

• if the design agency model is doomed,

• how creatives will get paid in the future,

• and how the lack of economic literacy blocks creatives from achieving their full potential.

Tulio Jarocki is a product designer at Blinkist, a subscription service that summarizes non-fiction books so they can be consumed in just 15 minutes. The company has over 2500 books in its database, more than 6 million customers, and it has raised over $35 million.

In the episode, we spoke about:

• the checklist design process that product designers use at Blinkist,

• how designers at Blinkist use data in their design process (and where they get it from),

• and differences between USA and Europe in design maturity.

Mackey Saturday is a world-renown graphic designer who created visual identities for some of the most famous brands of our time: Instagram, Oculus, Luxe and recently also Unsplash. He is currently running a brand agency based in New York City.

In this podcast we talked about:

• his early beginnings and how he learned to sell his services,

• how we can avoid taste based discussions with clients,

• when a brand redesign is a good idea and when it is not,

• and why do business even invest in logos?

Dave is a co-founder and Partner at Play Bigger Advisors, a consulting firm that coined the term category design and is advising companies on how to create and own new categories of products. They recently also published a book also called Play Bigger where they explain the category design process in detail.

In this episode we spoke about:

• what is a category and category design,

• why do category kings capture more than 70% of economic benefits in an industry,

• and how did companies such as Salesforce, Tesla, and Qualtrics become category kings?

A few weeks back, I published the guide for designers who want to learn more about business. As the title already suggests, it covers seven most important business skills for designers.

I decided to turn this guide into a podcast for those of you who prefer audio books. In it, we cover:

• Industry Analysis

• Competitor Analysis

• Business Strategies

• Business Models:

• Prototyping with Numbers

• Design Metrics

• Business Metrics

The second episode of Business Design Jam was all over the place. But in a good way ;).

With Jonathan, founder of AJ&Smart and co-host of an awesome podcast Product Breakfast Club, we spoke about business models and concepts relevant for designers.

We talked about Tesla, PewDiePie, Microsoft' Xbox and a lot about AJ&Smart’s products and journey. Among other things, Jonathan told us how he nearly bankrupted the agency and how he solved it.

Business Design Jam (BDJ) is a new format of Beyond Users podcast. It’s a discussion with a fellow business designer about inspiring business design examples and the learnings we can take from them.

In the first BDJ, I am joined by David Schmidt, a fellow business designer in Berlin, working as a business design partner at United Peers.

Each of us prepared three examples. After a short introduction, we went into details of these case studies and looked for key learnings that we can take away for our projects.

• 00:50 Company Builders (e.g. FinLeap) - Companies that create startups. We focused on company builders that help big corporates create startups.

• 6:30 VanMoof+ - The Dutch bike manufacturer that changed its business model and started selling subscriptions for their bikes (instead of selling them). VanMoof was discussed in the 12th episode of Beyond Users podcast.

• 14:15 - WeChat - A successful example of a platform business model. Even though WeChat is a messaging app, users can use it to pay its utility bills, order a pizza, send gifts to friends etc. The platform is open for 3rd party developers who create apps for WeChat and enable new functions.

• 22:20 Light Phone - A phone that is designed to do as little as possible. A good example of a blue ocean strategy, which combines low-cost and differentiation.

• 29:35 - Sandeman Tour Company - Company offering free walking tours in major European cities. Sandeman works with self-employed tours who are paid with tips. It is an interesting example of a franchise model.

• 36:50 - Warby Parker & Ace and Tate - Understanding industry forces (eyewear industry is dominated by Luxottica) can help us reimagine the product and traditional business model. Warby Parker revolutionized the industry by vertically integrating and offering glasses for $100 (usually $300+).

Christian Hertlein is a head of design at N26, the mobile bank startup with over 1 million customers across 17 European markets.

A year ago, Christian took over a team of designers in super fast growing startup and started integrating design across different departments and promoting design as an important part of the culture.

We discussed:

• how is the design team structured and organized within the N26,

• how to get a seat at the table by proactively shaping what the design team works on rather than passively waits for project briefs,

• and what are design consultants naive about when they work with clients.

Show notes:

• 1:40 How did Christian get into design?

• 6:05 What are consultants naive about when working with clients?

• 14:15 What are the responsibilities of a head of design?

• 16:45 Why is investing in design research important?

• 24:55 The importance of proactiveness

• 27:40 How is design team structured at N26?

• 30:50 The importance and advantage of tangibility

• 34:25 What KPIs does the design team use at N26?

• 36:50 The role of design as a driver of trust

• 46:00 Future plans for the N26’s design team

Raffaela Rein is a cofounder of the Berlin-based educational startup CareerFoundry, which offers online courses on UX, UI, and web development. Career Foundry is one of the biggest players in this field with more than 10.000 students each year.

Raffaela is also recognized as top 50 women in tech by Forbes (congrats!!) and a great guest for this podcast as she is a business leader with a big focus on design.

We spoke about:

• her organizational design experiments, changing the culture of CareerFoundry,

• why and how every employee (even non-designers) have UX as KPI in their performance review,

• and what you can say to your boss to convince her to invest more in design.

Show notes:

• • 2:20 How CareerFoundry started.

  • 6:30 What is special about CareerFoundry’s curriculum?

  • 10:25 How to convince your boss to invest in design?

  • 15:40 How a UX designer helped CareerFoundry to go from 10 to 100 customers per month

  • 21:50 New skills and disciplines that will be relevant for designers who want to advance their careers

  • 27:00 How CareerFoundry experimented with a flat hierarchy

  • 33:30 How CareerFoundry improve culture by 500% in 7 months

  • 37:10 UX key performance indicator (KPI) that CareerFoundry uses for all employees

Amy Bonsall is a head of venture design at IDEO. She currently works in the Palo Alto studio, leading a team of seven business designers. She is also an instructor in the recent IDEO’s course Designing a Business, which teaches venture design.

In the episode we covered:

• what is venture design and how it is different to lean startup,

• what is Amy looking in business design candidates,

• and how you can create prototypes that will give answers decrease uncertainty in your business or product team.

Show notes:

• 2:20 How did Amy get into design?

• 5:30 How do you get a job as a business designer (at IDEO)?

• 13:20 What skills do business designers need?

• 21:40 What is venture design?

• 28:00 How is venture design different from Lean Startup approach?

• 31:15 Behavioral vs attitudinal prototypes

• 35:10 How do you know you are making progress?

• 43:40 A good example of venture design

• 45:45 One thing about design Amy has changed her mind about

Taig Mac Carthy is a graphic designer who decided to become an entrepreneur to realize his creative vision. As many designers, he wasn't fond of business but changed his mind once he started to get more into entrepreneurship. After reading the Blue Ocean Strategy, he came up with the idea for blue wine GIK and Hola Plate, which are today very successful products.  

In the episode we covered:

• why is Taig focusing on providing meaning instead of solutions,
• how to test your product idea with a press release,
• and why did Taig decide to attend a business school.

Show notes:

• 2:35 How did Taig start his first business 
• 5:10 How Taig developed a distaste for business and how he turned that around
• 6:35 Why is Taig focusing on providing meaning instead of solutions
• 13:35 Entrepreneur as a cultural provocateur
• 15:15 Where does the idea for blue wine come from?
• 16:35 The pricing exercise from the book Blue Ocean Strategy
• 20:40 The pricing strategy of GIK 
• 23:20 How did Taig validate the idea before spending two years developing the wine
• 29:10 How did Taig test his 20 business ideas
• 31:30 The launch of Hola Plate with the PR strategy
• 34:15 How to test your product idea with a press release?
• 39:30 The importance of profit margins
• 42:35 Challenges that designers face when trying to become entrepreneurs
• 44:30 Why did Taig decide to attend a business school
• 48:35 How does blue wine sustain competitive advantage? 

Fabricio Teixeira is a design director at the digital product agency Work & Co and the founder of the UX Collective, one of the best resources for blog posts, links, and resources for UX designers. In The State of UX in 2018 report, UX Collective editors wrote that "The UX designers of 2018 will need to understand more about business". So, I reached out to Fabricio to learn more about the backstory of this statement and how did his path to becoming more business-savvy look like.

In this episode we spoke about:

• the simple exercise UX designers can use to start building their business muscle,
• how sharing knowledge is the best way to learn and advance the career, 
• and how can we recognize future trends in the UX community? 

Show notes:

• 2:20 How did Fabricio get into design? 
• 6:20 How Fabricio teaches UX design through simplification
• 10:30 How and why Fabricio started UX Collective
• 12:50 How sharing knowledge is the best way to learn 
• 17:05 How to recognize big trends and important patterns in the UX community? 
• 19:35 Why is learning about business important for designers
• 24:35 How did Fabricio learn business
• 27:25 The exercise Fabricio uses with his team to develop business empathy 
• 35:05 The question that uncovers business goals behind a design project

Taco Carlier is a co-founder and CEO of VanMoof, an Amsterdam-based company that design and manufactures awesome commuter bikes.

Taco is an industrial designer who turned his love for bikes, design, and business into a successful company, which is disrupting the bike industry. The company has recently launched VanMoof+, a subscription service for bikes, disrupting its own business model. 

In the episode we talked:

• how VanMoof prepared its business for a launch of a subscription service,
• how the company introduced an innovative Bike Hunter service that helps their customers when their bikes are stolen,
• and what are the advantages and disadvantages of a closed design system (VanMoof design all bike parts in-house)

François is senior product designer at Headspace. In 2017 he was asked to design a new cancellation process for Headspace users who decided they no longer want to use the service. At first, François thought this will be a boring task but it quickly turned into his pet project. In the end, he published an article on Medium, describing his process and providing guidance to other designers who want to design cancellation process too. 

In this a great example of a project that needs a careful balance of user focus and business knowledge because one needs to balance users' wish to unsubscribe and business' goal to retain users. How do you reconcile the two? Well, that's what we covered with frank. 

Show notes:

• 1:50 How did François get into design?
• 6:50 How did François survive the financial crisis as a designer freelancer? 
• 8:30 Why did François leave agency work and join Headspace? 
• 12:40 Headspace reached 1 million subscribers
• 14:10 The premise of François' article on cancelation process
• 20:10 How did François approach the challenge of designing cancelation process
• 25:30 Design principles of a good cancellation experience
• 29:00 Does being user-centered in a cancellation process drive business results?
• 34:00 The value of talking to non-designers in your organization 
• 35:25 Hacking Growth book
• 38:40 Growth tactics used at Headspace
• 41:45 What is the Headspace culture really like? 

Jonathan Courtney is a co-founder of AJ&Smart, a design sprint agency based in Berlin, which has worked with companies like Lufthansa, Slack, Google, Lyft, Bose etc. 

He is a host of The Product Breakfast Club podcast with Jake Knapp, author of Design Sprint. In one of the podcasts, Jonathan explained why he thinks the golden age of UX is over and what designers should do to stay relevant. Answer: learn business, of course. 

In this episode we spoke about:

• three business skills that designers have to learn to design better (and get ahead in career)
• why Jonathan loves panic learning, 
• how AJ&Smart launched online course on design sprint and generated €60k in pre-orders. 

Show notes:

• 2:15 How did Jonathan get into design? 
• 7:20 Jonathan's panic learning
• 9:55 How AJ&Smart started? 
• 14:00 The golden age of UX is over
• 18:50 Three business skills important for designers to master (product strategy, growth, marketing)
• 27:00 How can fluency in "growth" help designers on projects?
• 32:50 How do designers do good for business and users? 
• 38:20 How does Jonathan learn about client's business? 
• 40:30 AJ&Smart's online course on design sprints and how it generated €60.000 in pre-orders 

Ben Burns is an award-winning designer, a digital director at Blind, brand strategy design consultancy, and COO at The Futur (business education for designers). Ben has a fascinating story that took him from charging 50$ a logo to 100$ an hour and that ultimately changed his career. 

In the episode, we talked about topics related to running a creative business such as :

• why you should not look for more clients but better clients,
• what to say to your clients when you try to raise your rates, 
• and how to sell brand work at the premium rates (5 or 6 figures). 

Kate Rutter is an adjunct professor at California College of the Arts. She is a phenomenal UX designer with a strong background in arts and painting, so she sometimes refers to herself as a sketchnoter and graphic recorder. But she also combines her visual skills with data and metrics, particularly in her design process. 

In the episode we spoke about:

• why it makes sense to measure design,
• how to find a design metric for your project,
• and how you connect a design metric to business value. 

Steve Vassallo is a general partner at Foundation Capital (VC firm that invested in Pocket, Netflix, Uber etc.). Prior to that, he worked as a lead designer at IDEO where he worked on a famous Cisco's 7900 series VoIP phone. He recently published a book "The Way to Design", which helps designers become entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs adopt best design practices. You can read the book for free online.

In the episode we talked about:

• why will the 21st century be the decade of design,
• why empathy has become a buzzword and what empathy really is,
• common struggles of designers who want to become entrepreneurs.

Sudy Majd is a customer experience research lead at Candid Co. In the fifth episode, I spoke with Bobby, a colleague of Sudy, and we talked a lot about the way they do user research at Candid Co so it only made sense to dive deeper into these topics with Sudy. She has a PhD specialized in consumer behavior and behavioral economics. 

In the episode we spoke about:

• doing proactive user research that anticipates rather than reacts to business challenges,
• how to mix qualitative and quantitative research methods,
• and how to find the right profiles for your research questions. 

Show notes:

• 1:50 What did Sudy do before joining Candid Co?
• 6:20 How does academia work translate into Sudy's work at Candid Co?
• 8:20 An example of behavioral economic applied to Candid Co
• 11:00 How to proactively create briefs for user research
• 15:10 Research methods that Sudy uses in her work
• 19:50 What is a suitable sample size for quantitative and qualitative research
• 22:05 How to phrase questions for interviews and questionnaires
• 26:50 How to find the right profiles for user research?
• 35:30 How to bundle different research questions in one study
• 37:20 How does Sudy synthesise learnings? 
• 39:30 What are the common mistakes that beginners make? 
• 42:10 Who is part of the research team at Candid Co?
• 43:20 What one thing about design that surprised Sudy in a positive and one in a negative way? 

Bobby Ghoshal is a co-host of a famous podcast High Resolution and a co-founder of a startup Candid Co. He has more than 15 years of experience in the design world and is a big proponent of bringing design closer to business. 

In this episode we spoke about:

• how to do user research that is rooted in business problems
• how to measure and present results of your design work, 
• and how to hire and train a design team to become more business-savvy.

Show notes:

• 3:55 How did Bobby get into design? 
• 7:45 How 11-year old Bobby sold his art to parents
• 11:20 How Bobby's early sales experience translated into design
• 13:30  How to recognize if a designer is business-savvy?
• 16:40 How to train a designer to become more business-savvy?
• 21:30 How Bobby and his team does user research that is rooted in business challenges?
• 36:45 How does design team at Candid Co track and present results of design work?
• 41:15 Bobby's advice for designers who are just starting
• 46:25 What is one thing Bobby changed his mind about design after recording High Resolution?

Marc Hemeon has a truly impressive CV. He has lead design at YouTube, Google Ventures, Oakley, Digg, Design Inc, Fflick and lately Ease Central. He has been designing since 1996 and is a true veteran in the design community. 

In this episode we spoke about:

• the distinction between art and design,
• how ugly design can beat beautiful design,
• how to explain the value of your work to non-designers by finding the metrics they care about. 

Show notes:

• 2:10 How did Marc get into design in 1996?
• 4:50 How to sell design services?
• 10:20 How to show the value of your work by finding the metrics that organisation cares for
• 16:30 How Marc presents his designs to get buy-in from stakeholders
• 21:30 Asking for information and feedback from stakeholders?
• 25:30 Finding the balance between user goals and business goals (defining your design ethics)
• 29:40 Examples of balancing user and business goals
• 36:05 Marc's biggest design mistake (aka YouTube player disaster)
• 39:00 Design Inc's story (and what clients want from designers)
• 42:40 "Career exercise" that each designer has to do
• 50:00 Why Design Inc did not succeed
• 56:00 Marc explains why "design is not art"
• 1:02:30 Success = 80% Sell, 20% Design
• 1:08:35 What advice would Marc give to young designers?
• 1:12:20 What is one thing about design Marc has changed his mind about? 

Joel Califa is a senior product designer at GitHub. He recently wrote a very interesting and popular blog post Subverted Design, which describes what happens if designers forget that their first responsibility is still the user. You can read the full article on Joel's blog. 

In this episode we spoke about:

• examples of subverted design and how you can fight against it
• why putting users first is designers role even if other departments want us to become business-focused,
• and why you should still learn about business. 

More info on www.beyondusers.com

Joe Gerber is a business designer and a managing director of IDEO CoLAB. After studying biology, taking an MBA, and working as a product manager, he joined IDEO as the first business designer in the New York office. 

In the episode we spoke about:

• how to systematically test your design so that it achieves users and business goals,
• the role of vocabulary in bridging different design disciplines, 
• how do you use design approach to reduce risks in highly risky business situations, 
• and Joe's favourite business design questions that you can use in your project.

Trent Huon is a business design director at IDEO Munich. After finishing his MBA, he first worked as a management consultant.

As he never went through official design training, he had to learn design on the job when he joined IDEO. We talk about his transformation into designer and about the relevance of business in design.

Some of the topics we covered in this episode are:

• how to show non-designers the value of design,
• why spending some time thinking about business is super valuable and,
• how you can start thinking about the business side of design even if you know nothing about it.

If you want to learn more about business, visit beyondusers.com where you can take a 5-day email course - A mini MBA for designers. In these emails, I present five business concepts that are relevant for designers.