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. 

Beyond Users

59- Hidden costs behind every decision

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!

58- Guestimation Challenge 2

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

57- The good and the bad side of scaling companies

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

56- Yancey Strickler ex-CEO @Kickstarter - Towards more generous capitalism

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? 

55- Why would Tesla accept Bitcoin payments?

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).

54- Guestimation Challenge

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

53- Prototyping with Numbers

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

52- Can you become business-savvy without compromising 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

51- Circular economy, outcome-based pricing, cutting out middlemen

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 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.

50- Why we compete in arenas, not industries (mini d.MBA)

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

49- How one fine-dining restaurant thrives during the COVID lockdown

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. 

48- Rita Gunther McGrath - The end of competitive advantag

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. 

47- Andy Budd - The current state of design leadership

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

46- Maija Itkonen - A purpose-driven startup is changing our perception of meat

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. 

45- Eric Quint @3M - The role of a Chief Design Officer in a large company

A podcast that teaches business to designers.

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Beyond Users

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