In July 2015, we hosted a lively evening event to tackle an increasingly pressing issue: how should businesses be building and maintaining successful digital product capability? The evening brought together digital leaders from across various sectors who discussed some of the key issues. Here's Founder Mark Wilson and Lead Service Designer Katie Buchanan's presentation where they shared their experiences of making digital teams better. Thank you to everyone who joined us for a thought-provoking and enjoyable evening. For details of our upcoming events, visit our blog http://www.thehumanlayer.com

1. Unlocking the formula.
Katie Buchanan & Mark Wilson
WF Talks - Unlocking the formula for a high performance digital product team

2. 2
“Innovation remains a frustrating pursuit.
Failure rates are high and even successful
companies can’t sustain their performance.
“The root cause is that companies fall into the
trap of adopting whatever best practices are in
vogue or aping the exemplar innovation of the
moment.”
Gary P Pisano, Harvard Business Review, June 2015

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Unlocking the formula for sustainable
digital product excellence is the defining
challenge of the age for established
organisations.

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Most organisations have accepted the
central role that digital services play, and
how critical their digital product
experience is to their future success…

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… so they have aggressively built digital
teams to deliver on their digital agenda.

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Sounds great – and extremely
sensible… it’s just proving quite tricky
to make it all work.

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Why is embedding digital
capability in an established
organisation so difficult?

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Established org’s
ORGANISATIONALTRAITS
Volume of products
Scale
Reputation
Heritage/legacy
Digital leadership skills
MARKET CONTEXT
Disruptive threats
Commercial risk
Customer expectations
Trend fragility

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So the trick is to behave more like
startups, surely?

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Startups? They have it easy…

11. ORGANISATIONALTRAITS
Volume of products
Scale
Reputation
Heritage/legacy
Digital leadership skills
MARKET CONTEXT
Disruptive threats
Commercial risk
Customer expectations
Trend fragility
11
Established org’s

12. Established org’sStartups
ORGANISATIONALTRAITS
Volume of products
Scale
Reputation
Heritage/legacy
Digital leadership skills
MARKET CONTEXT
Disruptive threats
Commercial risk
Customer expectations
Trend fragility
12

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What operational models have
organisations tried to solve this
problem?

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Centralised
Build a design team
at the centre of your
organisation.

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Centralised but
dispersed
Place designer(s) in
each product group.

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Separate innovation lab
Build a lab separated
from core day-to-day
business.

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…and hope that
lessons are absorbed
back by those
watching.

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Partnership model
Partner with specialist
agencies, often to
help either with the
early thinking/
strategy or to
enhance design
capacity.

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?

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So what’s the answer? What’s
the formula?

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The answer is easy: do whatever it takes
to deliver world-class products and
services to customers.

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The formula is more complex…each is
unique, based on a mix of proven
ingredients and organisational DNA.

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But one thing’s for sure: the right formula
for any established organisation is
never pre-packaged or off-the-shelf.

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Some lessons learned…

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Don’t set disruption as an objective.
Do set real-world, pragmatic objectives.

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Don’t do your learning and
experimenting in public, but do learn
and experiment.

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Do invest heavily in the discipline of
product management: don’t outsource
product responsibility.

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Do give design a seat on the Board, but
don’t expect to be Apple overnight.

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Don’t design an MVP.
Do design a vision, then define an MVP.

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Do create an MVP. Don’t create an MP.

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The biggest risks are at the beginning:
so do invest most in specialist partners
early on.

32. Thank you
Good luck with your formula.

33. Mark Wilson, Founding Partner,
mark@wilsonfletcher.com
Katie Buchanan, Partner,
katie@wilsonfletcher.com
@Wilsonfletcher
#WF Talks