DevReady Podcast E51 - Conquer Your Market With Design Thinking with Andrew Bird

On this episode of the DevReady Podcast, Andrew and Anthony talk to Andrew Bird, director at Foundstone Advisory. During their conversation, they talk about implementing a meaningful business strategy, involving your tech team from the beginning, and how technology and design thinking can transform how you bring value to your customers. Before working at Foundstone Advisory, Andrew spent eight years at Datacom managing strategy and consulting businesses. At Foundstone, he has done a lot of work with businesses in technology and the digital space. He helped develop technology solutions in healthcare and other industries, consulting them on how to migrate and scale their models with growing IT and digital functions. Andrew provides some insight into how design thinking can help alleviate headaches downstream from the initial business strategy rollout. He stresses getting into the mindset of the client and spending as much time front-end loading to try to understand their problems and wishes. And of course, do not fall into the trap of thinking that technology itself can stand in as a solution to big industry problems. Ask good questions, but the customer’s needs first, and seriously consider how technology could enable you to do business better. Topics Covered: ● How technology comes into a strategy in the first place. ● Technology should be used to better customer experience. ● We need to educate senior people on what technology can really do. ● Customer experience and getting into the head of your audience. ● Communicating upfront will greatly increase your ROI. ● People jump into building the product way too early. ● Tech teams are often removed from the business strategy. ● The principle of design thinking. ● Covid changed people’s minds about design thinking. Key Quotes ❏ “If you’re not asking how technology can better a customer experience, you probably need to question why you’re investing in that technology.” (4:00) ❏ “People on the board need to ask ‘how can technology actually enable our business?’” (6:35) ❏ “Building technology, really, is the easy part.” (8:45) ❏ “Technology is not the be-all, end-all of any solution. (10:30) ❏ “What can we do to make sure we’re building a product that people need and actually want in the first place?” (14:00) ❏ “We try to get as close to the customer as possible. (16:15) ❏ “Explore what you know and what you don’t know, and make the decision after. (22:30) ❏ “Asking good questions is the key.” (28:00) ❏ “The customer wants to be heard, ultimately.” (39:30)