Design Thinkers Podcast

In our latest Design Thinker podcast we explore the importance of experimentation in business. We are on a quest to find out: The podcast guests today are well-placed to answer these questions. They are all involved in a new book - The Experimentation Field Book published by Columbia University Press. Natalie Foley and David Kester who feature, are two of the four co-authors alongside Professors Jeanne Liedtka and Elizabeth Chen, whilst one of Alan Penlington’s projects for British train company, South Western Railway, is featured in the book. With examples from Virgin Atlantic, Nike and South Western Rail, this podcast answers the fundamental question of why to run businesss experiments and how.

In this podcast we talk to our new Design Director, Goldie Chaudhuri. Goldie was Goldie was the individual we spoke to on our first ever podcast and we return to talk to her today, nearly four years later, to discuss her new role. Moreover, we focus on what it’s like working as an ensemble both within our team and with our clients themselves. This touches upon exciting projects involving South Western Railways and the Mayor's Design Lab, exploring how collaboration in design makes innovation possible.

How might we create equality of opportunity through design and tap talent potential in a multicultural society? That's the question we sought to explore in the first event of our 2023 Good Morning Design series: The Equity Activists. This event featured Design Thinkers Academy London and DK&A founder, David Kester, in conversation with the social entrepreneur, Poppy Jaman OBE, the HR expert, Loraine Matins OBE & the comedian, Ahir Shah. At the end of the panel discussion is an audience Q&A, for which the speakers were joined by Arup Major Project Director, Kate Hall & Assistant Director of Communities and Social Policy for the Greater London Authority, Tom Rahilly. The Equity Activists also saw the launch of the Mayor of London's 2023 Design Lab for Workforce Integration, which will be run by DK&A in partnership with the Black Leadership Group this year. Please get in touch if you want to find out more.

With LGBTQ+ hate crime on the rise, what would you do to stop it? For Marta Lima, a Technical Product Owner for Cloud Engineering at Vodafone, the answer lay in design. In this podcast she talks us through her creation of Zoteria, a new app to help the LGBTQ+ community and the wider public to come together and tackle the issue of hate crime. Here Marta shares her own experiences and those of the wider community to highlight what inspired her to make the app and the Design Thinking process that shaped her journey. Find out more about Zoteria here:

The pressures of the pandemic have left healthcare even more crippled than before. With patient backlog and patient waiting times at their worst in years across the NHS, Guy’s and St Thomas’ Trust knew they needed a new approach to improve Ambulatory Care for their patients. So they contacted our parent company, design consultancy DK&A, to research the problems patients are facing. This research could then be use to outline opportunity areas to innovate and help improve the patient experience. In our latest podcast we talk with our Innovation Lead Hattie Camp about the project with GSST and how Design Thinking can be used to improve healthcare. This includes a deep dive exploration of the research process and the challenges that were overcome to produce a piece of research that could make a difference.On top of that, Hattie looks back to her introduction to the Design Thinkers Academy London, including her terror whilst taking part in our Facilitation Mastery course, as well as looking forward to our Design Thinking Fundamentals course.

"How to unleash the power of intrapreneurs like Joe? The key is to enable them to pursue their vision." This question, asked by Richard Branson back in 2010, feels more realised now than ever before. Across the globe more and more companies are giving autonomy and freedom to the so-dubbed intrapreneurs to drive innovation from within. Yet what is it like to be an intrapreneur? Well who better to ask than the man Branson referred to in that interview now 12 years ago; our coach Joe Ferry.

So do you want to learn about Design Thinking but you're short of time? Well, our Design Thinking Fundamentals course may be the one for you. Taking place over just two-days at our London studio, it covers the complete double diamond: discover, define, develop and deliver. Adam Forbes is one such person who has taken the. course. He is the founder of Familiarize, a startup passionate about customers and helping early stage founders understand them better. Adam founded Familiarize because he believed "the old model of building products we think customers need and flogging them through advertising is dead. Previously Adam worked on the “growth” side of business, avoiding “cost cutting” wherever possible – mostly in innovation, a stint in the cabinet office’s e-government and many years in BP’s technology arm. In this edition of the podcast we talk to Adam about his experience on the course, what learning's he's going to take from it and how he's going to put Design Thinking to use.

So you’ve taken a Design Thinkers Academy London course, but what’s next? Perhaps you slot straight into a Design Thinking project, but what if you’re in an organisation where Design Thinking is almost non existent? In this podcast with Design Thinker and facilitator, Arnoud Koning, we share all the tips and tricks you need on how you can become a Design Thinking champion at work and make it take off. Arnoud Koning is not only a facilitator at the Design Thinkers Academy London, he’s helped promote Design Thinking at Proctor and Gamble, one of the world’s biggest consumer goods companies. He’s also worked as a consultant for the Design Thinkers Academy London’s parent company DK&A, and advised companies on how to use Design Thinking In the podcast Arnoud goes into depth about the different ways to implement Design Thinking, covering everything from convincing middle managers on its worth to an anecdote on how nappies brought a team together. We end the podcast with a complete summary of the best tips and tricks to get Design Thinking to launch in your company.

A Service Blueprint is a is a diagram that shows how a service really works in detail. It connects the customers experience with the people and activities that help deliver that service. In this version of the podcast, coach Simon Gough explains how to use Service Blueprints and why it makes Design Thinking even more powerful.

In our latest podcast, coach Simon Gough explains what is Systems Thinking and how it makes Design Thinking projects more successful. Simon Gough is an experienced design consultant, facilitator, trainer, speaker and writer with clients ranging from fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies to central government. He also teaches our Systems Thinking three-day course. Listen to him explore Systems Thinking, how it can be used and why it is crucial for anyone interested in developing their Design Thinking skillset.

Despite the many business closures of 2020 due to the pandemic, it also saw the launch of a record number of start-ups. Around 407,510 new businesses were formed during this period in the UK and one of those was Plateaway – an online platform that enables users to create their favourite restaurant dishes using meal kits. Meal kits feature all the ingredients and instructions needed to help make your own version of a restaurants signature dish. Think a DIY version of Deliveroo, that can touch all parts of the country and not just those local to the restaurant. Plateaway was born when one of the founders, a former Design Thinkers Academy London open course delegate, Harry Slagel, decided that there needed to be a centralised platform where all these kits were available. Working fast, Harry and his brother Lewis brought this idea together and Plateaway was formed. We first met Harry back in 2019 when he attended both our Design Thinkers Bootcamp and Design Thinking Facilitation courses. In this edition of our podcast we talk to Harry about starting Plateaway. We look at the lessons learned when launching a startup and Harry shares his best advice for those looking to do similar. We also look at how Design Thinking helped influence the work. Make sure you stay listening to the end in order to access a little Plateaway surprise for followers.

Some of you may have heard of the charity YMCA – the Young Man’s Christian Association. It was founded nearly 180 years ago in Britain. Now it’s based in Geneva and helps more than 60 million youth in 120 countries. Lloyd Wamai, is Programme Innovation and Management Executive at the Africa Alliance of YMCAs. We first met him in 2019 when he attended our Design Thinkers Bootcamp. At the time he feared the YMCA had lost its relevance. Now, with the help of Design Thinking, he’s planning to lift one million people out of poverty in Africa by 2026. In this edition of the podcast, find out how Lloyd is doing it.

Shambala is a four-day festival that takes place in Northamptonshire, England with over 200 musical, comedy, and dance acts across dozens of venues and stages, winning multiple awards along the way. We first met Shambala’s Creative Director and co-founder Sid Sharma back in 2019 when he attended our Design Thinkers Bootcamp. He loved that experience so much, he’s since been back on our Online Facilitation, Advanced Facilitation and Prototyping courses. In this edition of our podcast we spoke to Sid about the origins of Shambala festival, their drive for sustainability, why he wants a Design Thinking tent at the festival and why he's also signed up for our upcoming Design Sprint Camp.

In our craft series we recently introduced our new prototyping course, which teaches participants to use prototypes to test their ideas: determining if they are solving the right problem, building the right thing, failing fast if you aren’t, and improving their concept through an iterative process of learning-by-doing. One of the participants on the prototyping course was Annemarie Sheridan-Antille, who knows all about the power of the prototypes due to her work in luxury fashion. In the latest edition of our Design Thinkers Academy podcast, we spoke to Anne Marie to learn about her time on the prototyping course and how she uses prototypes, before focussing on her experiences working in the world of fashion with brands including Louis Vuitton, Hermès and Alexander McQueen. With our Design Sprint Camp on the horizon, where one of the key topic areas is fast fashion, we also discussed the fashion industry today and the changes it needs to make to deal with the fashion crisis before us.

For our upcoming Design Sprint Camp, we have a wide range of facilitators and coaches here to teach the very best of Design Thinking focussed towards our climate based challenge. One of those is Design Thinking innovator, facilitator and creative leader Arne van Oosterom, who we talk to in this edition of our Design Thinking podcast. We talk to Arne about why he is joining as a coach for the upcoming Design Sprint Camp, the benefits of learning online, and we dive into his background to learn all about his history in Design Thinking and how it’s led him to where he is today.

In this podcast we look at how the Design Thinkers Academy London used a Design Sprint to help one of the world’s largest software companies to initiate an idea that has led to real world solutions in tackling the scourge of plastics pollution. For it we spoke to Stephen Jamieson, Global Head of Circular Economy Solutions at SAP and DTA Founder, David Kester. The podcast was hosted by environmental consultant and former BBC journalist Daniel Boettcher. Learn all about the Sprint itself, the impact of Design Thinking on climate issues, and SAP's exciting new venture.

For our latest podcast we spoke to one our newest facilitators, Alieu Fofanah. Alieu is a senior consultant, facilitator and leadership coach and has worked within the private and not-for-profit sector for 12 years. He is well known for challenging mind-sets and behaviours to get leaders and teams to a place where transformative change can happen. For the podcast we interviewed Alieu about the world of consultancy and how it is now using a Design Thinking mindset. We also spoke about his own experiences and key life mantras that have got him to where he is today.

Effective facilitation in the workplace has never been more important, as the world navigates the vast complexities of remote working. So, for our latest podcast, we speak with two expert facilitators, Arnoud Koning and Susana Osorio, about their experiences as facilitators, touching upon the art of facilitation itself, great facilitation examples and people to learn from, and also covering our new Online Design Thinking and Advanced Online Facilitation courses in detail.

For our next podcast we focussed on the research method critical to Design Thinking: ethnography. Here we explore what ethnography is and its history as a research method. We look at the benefits of ethnography to business and how it can still be conducted during the current lockdown. For this podcast we interviewed ethnographer Dr. Katie Gaddini. Katie is a sociologist and a writer and a Senior Teaching Fellow in the department of Social Science at the University College London (UCL). To find out more or for any other questions, including about our new online courses, please get in touch.

Our second Design Thinkers Academy London podcast is here, this time with The Climate Group focussing on climate action and the role Design Thinking can play in the crisis facing the planet. Hosted by former BBC journalist Daniel Boettcher and featuring Helen Clarkson, CEO of The Climate Group and Goldie Chaudhuri, the Learning Designer at DTA London, we talk about sustainable diets and the impact of meat diets on the planet, COP26, understanding the user and more.