Originally released December 2, 2021

Guest

April Dunford

Author

Obviously Awesome - How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy it, Love it.

Summary

April Dunford, product positioning leader and author of the book Obviously Awesome - How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy it, Love it, joins Designing Next to share her insights and methodology around product positioning. In this episode, April shares why traditional positioning statements are not useful, how she now approaches positioning with her five components of effective positioning, and how she has seen the COVID-19 pandemic affect how companies approach their positioning.

Show Details

This episode’s guest is April Dunford, product positioning leader and author of the book Obviously Awesome - How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy it, Love it. Unsurprisingly, April has a tremendous amount of product positioning experience. She spent the first 25 years of her career as a start-up executive, leading marketing, product and sales teams. Six of her seven startups were acquired by brands including IBM, SAP, and Siebel. Through it all, she positioned, re-positioned and launched 16 products. Today she is an author and consultant.

Of course, we’re thrilled that she decided to share her knowledge and wisdom through the book Obviously Awesome, which captures her ideas about positioning and a methodology for doing it that anyone can follow. As she says, positioning is the foundation of everything we do in marketing and sales -- and we would say it is a key part of everything we do in innovation and design as well.

In this episode, Chad and Steve dig into all things positioning with April. Look forward to learning:

• How April approached the development and writing of her book as if she was developing a new product.
• Why April feels traditional positioning statements are not useful, and how she now approaches positioning as a result - including her five components of effective positioning.
• How April has seen the COVID-19 pandemic affect how companies approach their positioning.

Visit April’s personal website: https://www.aprildunford.com/

Get the book: https://www.amazon.com/Obviously-Awesome-Product-Positioning-Customers/dp/1999023005/

Originally released November 11, 2021

Guest

Tonya Browning

Vice President, Dell Digital Design

Dell Technologies

Summary

Tonya Browning, Vice President, Dell Digital Design at Dell Technologies, joins Designing Next to share her learnings and perspective from leading design at organizations large and small. Tonya covers a wide variety of subjects with Steve and Chad, including her three key waypoints around design leadership at large companies, why failing fast is so important in design - and how to fail fast the right way, and her diverse sources of design inspiration - from Cyberpunk to palimpsests to Picasso.

Show Details

This episode’s guest is Tonya Browning, Vice President, Dell Digital Design at Dell Technologies. As the first Vice President of Design in Dell’s IT organization, Dell Digital, Tonya is building a modern design practice as the organization transforms and adopts modern methodologies as well as new technologies. She oversees digital design, analytics, generative content, UX engineering, research and customer satisfaction measures.

As we’ll hear in our conversation, she is an expert in and passionate about design, software engineering, usability, content and accessibility. She has many varied experiences, implementing enterprise level applications and digital experiences for PayPal, Express Scripts/Cigna, Magento, Visa, as well as a number of startups (including one she founded).

There is so much to talk about with Tonya, she has a unique passion and a really interesting perspective across a number of subjects. Look forward to learning:

• What she has learned about design from her experience at organizations of all sizes, from start-ups to large enterprise organizations.
• Tonya’s three key waypoints around design leadership at large companies.
• Why failing fast is important from a design perspective, how it works best and why it sometimes doesn’t work.
• The advice that Tonya has for those who want to bring more of a design focus and mindset to their organizations.
  

Visit Tonya’s personal website: tonyabrowning.com.

Originally released October 28, 2021

Guest

Elena Zloteanu

International Design Thinking Program Manager

Hochland

Summary

Elena Zloteanu, International Design Thinking Program Manager at Hochland, joins Designing Next to share insights from Hochland’s journey of scaling design thinking across their organization. In this episode, Elena covers a number of topics with Steve and Chad, including how she learns from failures and how a past “successful failure” in design thinking helped lead her to where she is today, how she integrates Hochland’s mission to excite consumers about cheese into all of her design thinking challenges, and how she continued innovation and design thinking efforts through COVID - creating what she calls an innovation bubble.

Show Details

This episode’s guest is Elena Zloteanu, International Design Thinking Program Manager at Hochland. Hochland is a cheese and dairy manufacturer based in Germany, with distribution across Europe and the United States. Elena has been with Hochland for 18 years and held many positions across marketing and innovation. Today, her role focuses on implementing Design Thinking at Hochland. Her mission is to scale adoption of Design Thinking across the organization as both a toolbox and mindset, with the goal of contributing to the organization's innovation effort and speeding up the time to market of new products..

Years ago, Elena made it her mission to bring Design Thinking into Hochland, and make it a core element of their business. In this episode, she is going to share a lot about that journey with us. Look forward to learning:

• Elena’s perspective on why innovation is important in the food category - and for cheese specifically for her
• How Elena learns from failures and how a past “successful failure” in design thinking helped lead her to where she is today
• How she continued innovation and design thinking efforts through COVID - creating what is called an innovation bubble.