About Nathan Shedroff
Nathan is a serial entrepreneur. customer experience and business strategist, education innovator, author, and speaker. Currently, he is the executive director of Seed Vault Ltd, a Singapore-based, open, independent alternative to conversational AI platforms like Alexa, OK Google, and WeChat, etc.—all built on blockchain. Nathan has written over 10 books, started over 6 companies, and founded the ground-breaking Design MBA program at California College of the Arts, where he continues to teach. He is focused on building new tools for strategy and communication and leads the Food Clarity Framework initiative for making food systems more clear.
Talk
Double Your Mileage: Use Your Design Research Strategically
Now that you’ve collected that great design research, integrated qualitative with quantitative, generated important insights, and put it to work into making products and services better, it’s time to get double the mileage (influence) from those same insights and use them toward corporate strategy.
The missing element from the traditional business strategy process is the critical insights that come from (mainly, qualitative) user research.
Our peers use quantitative market research that misidentifies business opportunities (and solutions) because they have an incomplete understanding of customers. With the right tools, processes, and framing, your research can influence decisions of WHAT products and services get green-lit.
Workshop
Better Strategy for Design
Much of the business conversation surrounding customer experience within corporations is based on myths that don’t support great products and services.
Designers and other innovators get stuck in the middle—between customers, managers, and financial decision-makers. However, new definitions of value, relationship, and experience can help us reframe what we do. And new tools, like the waveline, can help us not only design and develop better offerings, but better sell the value of what we do internally.
What this workshop will cover?
- A new definition of value that expands the discussion and value for innovation
- How to participate strategically with others in your organization
- How to “fix” SWOT, competitive, and other analyses and properly approach positioning, using design research (which you can share with your non-design colleagues)
- How to advocate for customers to those who don’t understand or adequately value them when making corporate decisions
Who this workshop is for:
This workshop is for any design or innovation professional who is looking to better understand strategy and conversations about value within their organization. Attendees can be new to corporate strategy and tools like SWOT analyses and Positioning. However, even those with some experience will find better ways of using these tools and building better strategy, in an innovation context. This includes being able to counter arguments against investing in customer-centric objectives.