Our Guests: Sohaila Ouffata, BMW i Ventures, Susana Jurado, Telefónica Wayra Builder, and Ethan Imboden, frog

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Design Mind frogcast Ep. 28 - Studio Sessions: Corporate Venturing

<p><strong>On this episode,</strong> we’re diving even deeper into the world of corporate ventures for the Next Economy. To do this, we’re listening in to a conversation with three experts in this space: frog’s own Ethan Imboden, VP of Design and Global Head of Ventures, Susana Jurado, Head of Telefónica’s Wayra Builder and Sohaila Ouffata, Managing Director of BMW i Ventures in Europe. The three talk corporate venturing building, corporate venture capital, what it means to be a Next Economy business and even how to raise children in the metaverse.</p>
<p><span data-ccp-props="{}">Listen to the podcast episode and watch the full video below. You can also find us on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/design-mind-frogcast/id1541644073" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><b>Apple Podcasts</b></a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/5mxbuRY6KtBwIrNhWhu0sx" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><b>Spotify</b></a><b> </b>and anywhere you listen to podcasts.  </span></p>
<p>To learn more about <strong><a href="https://www.frog.co/services/venture-design" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Corporate Venture Building</a></strong> at frog, download the <strong><a href="https://go.frog.co/corporate-venture-building" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chief Challenges 4: Venturing Forward</a></strong> report.</p>


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<p style="text-align: center;"><strong><a href="https://go.frog.co/corporate-venture-building" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Download the new report Chief Challenges Episode 4: Venturing Forward</a></strong></p>


Ethan Imboden

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Design Mind frogcast: Ethan Imboden, frog VP of Design, Global Head of Ventures

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Sustainability X Ventures: Your Questions Answered

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><strong>Here at frog,</strong> we’re seeing a focus on sustainability increasingly becoming mission-critical for businesses and a key component of innovation, especially when it comes to our work with startups and corporate ventures. That’s why we recently put out a call on social media to listeners and friends worldwide asking for your questions on all things at the intersection of sustainability and ventures.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">On this episode of the Design Mind frogcast, Ethan Imboden, frog VP of Design, Global Head of Ventures and Executive Sponsor of our sustainability practice is here to answer your questions.</span></p>
<p>Listen to the podcast episode and find transcripts below. You can also find us on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/design-mind-frogcast/id1541644073" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Apple Podcasts</strong></a>, <strong><a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/5mxbuRY6KtBwIrNhWhu0sx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Spotify</a> </strong>and anywhere you listen to podcasts.</p>


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frog’s strong design vision based on real urban needs makes it to market (mostly) unchanged



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The Evolution of a Smart City Hub

<p><strong>In today’s digital world</strong>, we’re used to products that launch weeks after the initial idea is born. It’s tempting to forget that the speed of launch is quite different in the world of products that live within the urban infrastructure, where a minimum viable product (MVP) must launch ready to withstand the noon-day heat in Las Vegas and the wintertime streets of Toronto for years to come. There are many challenges in making a product real while keeping the design vision intact. The concept must respond to the needs of the city as much as the needs of the citizen, and of the business that launches it.</p>
<p>While the name has changed many times over the five years of its evolution from concept to street corner, frog’s Beacon concept has stood the test of time, changing less than its name on the path to launch.</p>


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<h2>Beacon: A concept for the city by citizens</h2>
<p>As the contract for New York City’s street corner phone booths were nearing renewal, the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications opened a competition for innovative proposals for new urban infrastructure that would replace the payphone. A multi-disciplinary team of frog designers in the New York studio took this challenge to heart.</p>
<p>Having recently experienced the effects of Superstorm Sandy, the NYC team had personal experience with how the urban environment reacts in a crisis, and how the needs of the city, its citizens, and its communities can change dramatically. The team designed Beacon to be a resilient part of a dynamic city with multiple redundant power sources, such as solar, and the ability to provide service and community alerts through low-power top displays.</p>
<p>As proud New Yorkers, the team also took the city itself for inspiration in the design, echoing the landmark Flatiron building in the form, and the different levels of view to shape the design. Responding to the street-level needs of citizens, the design provided key services from calls to local data on the lower screen; and used the upper screen to provide advertising and heads-up information that could be controlled by the city whether it be for the Marathon or the next urban crisis.</p>
<p>The original concept created a nexus of connectivity for the smart city of the future—a hub that would bring communities together and provide services throughout the seasons of the City’s needs. Beacon was one of six finalists for NYC’s Reinvent the Payphone competition and was presented with the Mayor’s Award for Visual and User Experience.</p>
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<h6>Palo and LQD Wifi</h6>
<p>The initial concept caught the eye of LQD Wifi, a technology startup with the mission to make Smart Cities real through ubiquitous wifi. The LQD team had both a mission and a technology vision and sought a design partner to give the promise form. The functionality, design and thought behind frog’s concept were a perfect fit. Through our portfolio <a href="https://www.frog.co/services/ventures">frogVentures</a>, we invested our original design and subsequent work into the company, taking an equity position alongside the founders. Our joint team then embarked on a close partnership to bring the full hardware, software and service platform to market.</p>
<p>When building new businesses from the ground up, we use our <a href="https://www.frog.co/services/venture-design">venture design</a> approach that prioritizes business impact while optimizing time to market. Jumpstarting the commercialization work, LQD and frog rapidly developed a diverse range of new concepts to pressure-test the original Beacon concept. Ultimately, the group made the unanimous decision to proceed with only minor refinements to the original design to take advantage of new technology and commercialization opportunities. Renamed Palo, the detailed industrial design and engineering of the product got underway, with frog’s New York team frequenting the Long Island production facility to roll up their sleeves on the factory floor.</p>
<p>Concurrently, the team dove deep into the business and service model. They identified that Palo’s street corner real estate could support a more valuable network-access business model, permitting a departure from the original advertising-based model. The design grew in height to accommodate the new network features, the most dramatic form change in the evolution from Beacon to Palo. The touch-based digital ‘citizen’ experience was prototyped and developed in parallel as the hardware progressed into a robust, manufacturable outdoor communications platform.</p>
<p>In June 2015, Palo made its industry debut at the Intelligent Communities Forum summit in Toronto. The design made waves for the second time, and set new partnership conversations in motion that would reshape LQD Wifi—and the cities it was founded to serve. In early 2016, Palo beta units were installed as part of the Toronto Waterfront redevelopment project.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h6>The Verizon Digital Kiosk</h6>
<p>In November 2016 it was announced that <a href="http://fortune.com/2016/11/15/verizon-wi-fi-kiosk-maker-lqd/">Verizon had acquired LQD Wifi</a> as a major step forward for their ‘Smart Cities’ strategy for urban infrastructure. This triggered the third name change for the design, as it became known as the Verizon Digital Kiosk &#8212; but the concept retained its physical and user experience design, and augmented a portfolio of other products including energy-saving street lighting, smart traffic control, and intelligent video solutions with its communications platform. Verizon launched a beta version of the Smart Cities initiative at the 2017 Super Bowl in New Orleans, debuting the Digital Kiosk as a way for event-goers to gain access to Super Bowl information and wifi for mobile devices.</p>
<p>The first permanent installations of the Digital Kiosk began in New Rochelle, NY in 2018, only five years after the initial concept was conceived. The kiosks will continue to roll out to cities across the US.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h6>Making Concepts Live in the Market</h6>
<p>The core vision behind the Digital Kiosk is a device that serves the needs of cities and citizens through its multi-level design, and through redundant internal systems designed to survive the realities of street and digital life. This vision remained true through business model evolution, industrial engineering and manufacturing, and changing ownership and stakeholders. The design began with user empathy, an understanding of the urban context and a passionate belief that all kinds of design can evoke an emotional response. Because of the relative speed and iterative nature of this work, the project was selected by <a href="https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=55187">Harvard Business School as a case study</a> for their students to understand the value of venture design, and its application to complex systems of physical, digital and service design.</p>
<p>frogs live for these launch days, and through our team’s passion, our Ventures partnerships, and design craft we’re proud to see this concept take shape in the world.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h6>Palo Timeline:</h6>
<ul>
<li><strong>2013</strong> &#8211; A multi-disciplinary team in frog’s NY studio responds to the Mayor&#8217;s <a href="https://reinventpayphones.splashthat.com/">Reinvent Payphones Design Challenge</a> to imagine a new public utility for the payphone vendor agreements expiring in 2014. frog&#8217;s submits “Beacon,” which is selected <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/1672065/beacon-a-pay-phone-that-saves-lives-and-google-searches">as one of 6 finalists, also winning the best visual and user experience design award.</a></li>
<li><strong>2014</strong> &#8211; frog receives the IDSA IDEA Silver Award for the Beacon design. LQD, a wireless startup, partners with frog to bring the concept to market and develop an integrated network of 21st-century community-based tech hubs. Beacon is renamed Palo.</li>
<li><strong>2015</strong> &#8211; In only 18 weeks, LQD and frog built the business strategy and brand vision, refined the design, and developed the hardware. Palo was unveiled at the Intelligent Community Forum Summit in Toronto.</li>
<li><strong>2016</strong> – LQD is acquired by Verizon, with the intent to integrate Palo into their ‘smart cities’ strategy. Palo is renamed ‘Verizon Digital Kiosk’.</li>
<li><strong>2017</strong> &#8211; the Digital Kiosk is part of the Verizon installations for Super Bowl 2017.</li>
<li><strong>2018</strong>– The first <a href="https://enterprise.verizon.com/products/internet-of-things/smart-cities-and-communities/digital-kiosk/">Digital Kiosks are installed in New Rochelle, NY</a></li>
<li><strong>2019</strong> – Digital Kiosks launch in cities across the US, including Seattle and Sacramento.</li>
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<p class="b2-alt">Congratulations to the multidisciplinary team from frog, LQD Wifi and Verizon who made Beacon / Palo / Digital Kiosk a reality.</p>
<p class="b2-alt">Special thanks to the original frog team who created Beacon: Brandy Bora, Kenny Chui, Jonas Damon, Michael Evashevski, Jinseok Hwang, Radis Jensethawat, Turi McKinley, Hans Neubert, Mayo Nissen, Ron Rosenman, Kajsa Westman, Elliot Winard, Adam Wrigley; to those who worked on the LQD Palo iteration: Alexandra Coym and Ethan Imboden; and to LQD Wifi team: Randy Ramusack, David Raabe, Tim Snyder, Alex Abelin, JM Fryback and Ryan Brown.</p>


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<p class="b2-alt">As Vice President &amp; Head of Venture Design at frog, Ethan Imboden oversees the firm’s work at the intersection of design and entrepreneurship. As part of his role, Ethan leads frogVentures™, which invests frog’s capabilities into shared-risk opportunities and ensures that frog’s portfolio companies start smarter, build faster and establish crucial design and strategy capabilities to support their growth.</p>
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<p class="b2-alt">Turi Mckinley focuses on developing frog’s design research, participatory design and creative collaboration skills. She partners closely with companies seeking to develop new skillsets and capabilities for user centered design and innovation.</p>
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I designed an award-winning product, but it had production problems that were almost financially catastrophic. I almost killed my company with design. These lessons will prevent you from making the same mistakes.

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How to Prevent Design from Killing Your Company

<p><strong>I remember exactly where I was on July 14, 2002.</strong> It was my 31st birthday, but that is not why it stands out so clearly in my memory. It stands out because it was the beginning of a personal odyssey that would take ten years, represent the steepest learning curve that I have ever climbed, and teach me—a designer—that design can kill your company.</p>
<p>I spent my birthday at the largest annual gathering of sex product manufacturers in North America: The Adult Novelty Manufacturers Expo. At first, I was bit taken aback by what I saw. I was not comfortable or familiar with the category, but eventually I began to see that these products were just like any other widget, and from there the design opportunities became apparent. Sex is extremely important. It is a fundamental part of the human experience and, as I considered the opportunities, I came to believe that products that engage our sexuality should be beautifully designed, made, and presented. To that end, I started sketching, raised money, and created a company called Jimmyjane.</p>
<p>A few years after our launch we introduced a flagship product, FORM 6. It was special because of its cordless charging, which enabled it to be the first genuinely submersible, completely rechargeable vibrator. It was also crossing over into the mainstream. You could find our products everywhere, from places like The Sharper Image (the largest retailer of personal massage products at the time) to Louis Vuitton, Nordstrom, and W Hotels worldwide. We were also changing the social context of this product category. The supermodel Paulina Porizkova wore a blindfold that I designed, and when Kate Moss was seen buying our vibrators, Vogue wrote about her purchase. Not only was FORM 6 making a splash, it was also winning numerous awards from institutions that had never before acknowledged any product in this category.</p>
<p>Behind the scenes, the FORM 6 launch was a financial and operational catastrophe. It was enormously complex throughout that product introduction, and as a result it was eight months behind, 400% over budget, and it was selling at almost zero margins. We were behind our projections, we were behind on our deliveries, and we were burning bridges with our partners left, right, and center. Further, I had invested all of my savings and then quite a bit more into Jimmyjane. I too was bankrupt.</p>
<p>At this moment of Jimmyjane’s imminent demise, I met a wise man. This entrepreneur asked me if I knew the first rule of starting a company. I answered that I clearly did not. His response was, “don’t die.” Most start-ups break this rule, and many face a particularly tragic form of sudden start-up death, which I refer to as design suicide. By following a few basic lessons, you can learn from someone who almost lost it all, and prevent design from killing your company.</p>
<h2>Smell The Plastic</h2>
<p>Early in my career I ran into a manufacturing challenge. My boss came over, looked at what I was doing and said, “you need to smell more plastic.” He could see that I did not understand the correlation between what I was drawing on the page, and what was actually going to need to happen in the factory. I did not have the experience necessary to know that when I drew one line, the production line would have to be reorganized. When I drew a different line, they would have to add a screw.</p>
<p>My design for FORM 6 required us to place a complete product, with fully functional electronics, into an ejection-molding machine that would apply extremely high temperature and pressure to over-mold liquid silicone. I did not anticipate that we would crush 15% of them, leading to a very low yield rate. <strong>I designed an award-winning product, but it had production problems that were almost financially catastrophic. I almost killed my company with design.</strong></p>
<p>So, smell the plastic! Understand everything that needs to happen between the designer and the user. The start-up offers an incredible opportunity to see firsthand the impact of your work. Designers should know, even before they sit down to sketch, the implications of their lines on the warehouse worker’s schedule. They need to understand that a slightly different line will require a new certification to sell the product into Japan. The designer must understand the full set of implications of their craft.</p>
<h2>Fast and Cheap is Good</h2>
<p>You may have heard this theory or idea: if you have fast, cheap, and good, you can choose two. Often you will hear this from project managers who are trying to avoid anything too cheap or too fast. The idea is that if something is cheap and good, it is not going to be fast. If it is fast and good, it is not going to be cheap. But designers just want it to be good, good, and good. We design for ourselves, for other designers, to impress the people who give us awards, and for the end-user. With FORM 6, my instinct was telling me that the better I made the product, the better the company was going to do. As a result, FORM 6 was slow, extremely expensive, and incredibly good. I failed to appreciate that time is money, money is finite, and without time and money, you die.</p>
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<p>After learning that lesson with FORM 6, I was later approached with another design challenge. We had high traffic to our site Jimmyjane.com, but we also had a very high bounce rate. There were a lot of people coming and not converting, and we suspected it was because we were selling products that were more exclusive than what our competitors were offering. We decided to test this theory by updating our product offering to include some of the most iconic products in the space. Through partnerships with the manufacturers we were able to get these well-known products created in an exclusive way. They were all produced in white, we packaged them very similarly, and we called them THE USUAL SUSPECTS. The launch of this line was fast and cheap. But was it good? The test went so well  that these products are still being sold under Jimmyjane’s site six years later. We never needed to go back and replace them, because they were functioning perfectly in the line. Choose two is really a trick question; fast and cheap—in the start-up environment—is equivalent to good.</p>
<h2>New Is Not Better</h2>
<p>Fingertip vibrators have been on a market for a very long time, and they offer great promise. The promise is that you know how to use your hands, and the fingertip vibrator seeks to amplify that experience. It is a product category that was selling well based on the promise, but we saw it as an example of a good idea with terrible execution. Through intensive engineering we managed to miniaturize the vibration and deliver three times the vibration power in one-third the volume. We did not discover an entirely new product category, but we found a great idea — and actually delivered on its promise. Unlike FORM 6, our fingertip vibrator launched on time, on budget, and with strong margins. In fact, it recouped all of the surrounding costs within six months.</p>
<p>Designers often feel that if they do not give you something you have never seen before, they are not doing their job. They have an innovation bias. But newness and business impact are not necessarily correlated. Newness and risk are correlated. With newness comes unknowns, and with unknowns come risks. Most start-ups do not need any more risks than they already have, so if you plan to innovate, it should be very focused, and innovated judiciously.</p>
<h2>Design for Business Impact</h2>
<p>From entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship, I have learned countless lessons about design. I can boil almost all of them down to one very simple idea: to bring the most value to start-ups, and to their end users, we need to design for the business impact. We can then expand beyond the business impact, to the experience and the product, but without the business impact in mind, we risk design suicide. I am grateful that we learned these lessons at Jimmyjane, and I am very proud of the impact that the Jimmyjane team has had on both the sex products industry and the lives of our end users.</p>
<blockquote><p>I failed to appreciate that time is money, money is finite, and without time and money, you die.</p></blockquote>
<p>When Jimmyjane was acquired, I had to step back and think about what I wanted to do next. I knew I wanted to continue leveraging design and the creation of new businesses, which I refer to as venture design. Today, I’m the head of <a href="https://www.frog.co/services/venture-design" target="_blank" rel="noopener">venture design</a> at frog, where I am helping to leverage our capabilities, our experience, and our reach in the service of entrepreneurs. We collaborate with founding teams to propel our businesses forward, always with an emphasis on designing the impact. As an example, the co-founders of Idea Shaper—Bill Gross and Steve Shell— approached us. They are bringing the power of 3D printing into the home, by creating one of the most affordable and easy-to-use consumer 3D printers. In a very intensive six-week program we honed their strategy, renamed and re-branded the company, and designed the first iteration of their product, marketplace, and app designs. We captured their story in a video, and helped them to launch on Indiegogo. The Indiegogo campaign was a smashing success, and the newly named <a href="https://www.frog.co/work/new-matter-3d-printing-ecoystem" target="_blank" rel="noopener">New Matter</a> is the number one 3D printer on that crowd-funding platform. Moreover, we achieved the impact that they needed: we pre-sold over 2,500 printers, and jumpstarted their community of enthusiasts. We are currently building upon the success of this project and others like <a href="https://www.frog.co/work/kidaptive-learner-mosaic" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Learner Mosaic</a>, a mobile app for parents that engages them in their preschooler’s learning process, to scale our venture design practice and help our portfolio companies start smarter, iterate faster, and establish crucial design capabilities that support their growth.</p>
<p>Both designers and entrepreneurs like to reframe every challenge as an opportunity. As a designer and an entrepreneur, this is the opportunity that I am pursuing. I believe that through design we launch stronger start-ups. Not many people would debate that these days, but I think that there is another side to the equation. Through entrepreneurship we become better designers. I want to keep this virtuous cycle going, and ideally, with as few design fatalities as possible.</p>


<p>As Vice President &amp; Head of Venture Design at frog, Ethan Imboden oversees the firm’s work at the intersection of design and entrepreneurship. As part of his role, Ethan leads frogVentures™, which invests frog’s capabilities into shared-risk opportunities and ensures that frog’s portfolio companies start smarter, build faster and establish crucial design and strategy capabilities to support their growth.</p>


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