A Day in the Life: Head of Design at a Venture Studio
Venture studios are the sh*t. We are company and venture builders. We bring innovation, human capital, entrepreneurship, and technology under one roof. Big dreams with the muscle, wit, and grit to make it happen, the pragmatism to quickly axe any dead ends, all supported by a hive mind that would make Socrates blush. It is the disruption the venture landscape and the world need right now.
What’s a venture studio like?
If you've been a part of startups, innovation companies, design thinking firms, or internal innovation teams, then I don’t need to explain the level of performance and focus needed to thrive. Now, multiply that by ten and you’ll start to get an idea of the venture studio tempo for a designer. If it were a spirit animal, it would have the speed of a cheetah, the high-performance of a horse, eagle eye focus, and the 360-degree micro-pivoting skills of an owl. And if you're a designer, you would have an octopus’ miraculous ability to grow extra arms on demand.
A Day in the Life
I’ll stick to the highlights in this post and follow it up with deep dives in the upcoming weeks as part of a series. So, grab your drink of choice and buckle up. This ride is about to take off.
There I was, ready to learn new things, be challenged, all that good stuff. Well, sh*t got real, really quick, particularly when my trusted and reliable design thinking framework, or the double diamond approach as some call it, was challenged. Oh yeah, talk about disrupting the disruptive. I quickly found out that the venture studio is the badass rebel of the startup ecosystem.
It challenges the design thinking process by reconfiguring the frameworks that historically led innovation. Talk about intrepidness. Who needs double diamonds when you can do it all in a single diamond?
Welcome the single diamond, a faster and more fluid framework.
That was the first big mental adjustment. It meant I had to re-prioritize when and what tools I pulled out of my design arsenal. More on this in future posts.
Ownership
As a key player, Ownership is set at expert-level from the get-go which is exhilarating for those with Responsibility as one of their CliftonStrengths themes. It means design leaders wear cross-functional leadership hats, including stepping in the shoes of a founder and speed-walking the walk. Having an impact at the core level of the studio and every company thereafter is not optional. It’s a dream come true for all you design leaders that are pushing for a seat at the table. You have access to the whole damn building! So, yah, no pressure. Just, um, make it count. 😉
Built for Speed
According to GAN’s Built for Speed whitepaper:
"...the number one job to be done by every innovator is learning as much as possible, as fast as possible, for the lowest cost possible, and amidst uncertain conditions inside new markets"
This is a mood and a mantra. Since speed is key and people process images much faster than text, then well-designed visuals are more than a power-up, they’re the spark that sets the world on fire. The faster you can conceptualize a business venture, the faster you can socialize that vision. Equipped with interactive mock-ups, you can quickly gather valuable feedback across your networks, inspire ideation, refinements, buy-in, enabling a plethora of activities incredibly early. Cheap micro-pivots over expensive leaps all day.
