#6 | Kathryn Richards | Driving innovation in different countries and cultures

“Our role as designers (...) is to bring the customer to every conversation. So in this kind of enviroment we are there to be the champion of the customer. (...) And needs to be driven by insights and robust thinking.”

Kathryn on the impact and role of design when working with other stakeholders and communicating the value of design.

The newest guest at Designdrives is Kathryn Richards, Design Director at Fjord in South Africa. Kathryn had the chance to drive Service Design and Design Strategy in an impressive amount of countries - she designed in London, Munich, Paris, Istanbul and across South Africa.

This rich experience as a design leader is the base of our conversation: we learn what it means to design in different environments, solve local design problems and face new challenges like building up Designit London or transitioning to new roles of leading design teams. Besides Designit and various positions at Fjord she also worked at EY and Designplus getting to know how to communicate the importance and value of design from a broad design consulting experience.

Incredibly inspiring to hear her insights how to convince other stakeholders on the importance of the design investment and perspective in the process of innovating in products and services: to ultimately driving innovation across public and private organisations—from start-up, global corporates to the government - that full-fill customer desires beyond expectations.