Are you a faced with a business-related question, but don’t know who to ask for help? Facing challenges at work as you build your business confidence, and need some expert advice? Well, the d.MBA’s very own Alen and Franz are here to help!  Welcome to the d.MBA Mailbag, our new podcast format where Alen and Franz turn Agony Uncles as they tackle anonymous questions from the d.MBA community.  In episode one our expert hosts offer sage advice on… How to influence business strategy as a...

Seen enough AI tool renderings of fantasy avatars, futuristic skyline designs, or unicorns playing tennis? Franz Blach certainly has. As tools like Chat GPT, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion continue to capture our imaginations and headlines, they’ve also prompted an existential crisis in our industry. Could AI make us redundant? Franz doesn’t think so. Strategic decisions still need our expertise, and the wicked problems AI can help us solve are orders of magnitude more ambitious than...

Jim Barksdale, a former CEO of Netscape, once famously proclaimed there are “only two ways to make money in business: one is to bundle; the other is unbundle.” Bundling is the business of rolling up products or services into packages, usually at a lower cost than buying them individually. Think meal deals, all-inclusive holidays, and software suite subscriptions that throw in all manner of bonus products for “free”. Who can resist great deals like these? Well, sometimes bundling comes at a...

For our latest episode we put our new business school quiz to the test, with our unsuspecting producer Tom Prior in the hot-seat. When it comes to understanding business terminology and concepts, it can regularly feel like our knowledge is under the spotlight.  What does that business terminology mean? Should I know what that stakeholder was referring to? I’ve heard that acronym before… what the hell is ROI? In these situations we might want to phone a friend or ask the audience....

Sept 15th, 2022. The day Adobe announced its intention to acquire Figma for an eyewatering $20Bn was also a day of mourning for much of the design community. Our industry’s main tool was falling into the hands of a brand many have grown increasingly skeptical of. Sad times. But at a company retreat in rural Spain, the team at Penpot was rejoicing. Their nimble, open-source design tool is an alternative to the monopoly. An innovative upstart in the face of a seemingly greedy, toxic brand. ...

Discounting and Tesla are two words you never hear together. Elon Musk famously wrote in an email to Tesla staff that “There can never – and I mean never – be a discount on a new car coming out of the factory in pristine condition… The acid test is that if you cannot explain to any customer who paid full price why other another customer didn’t without being embarrassed, then it is not right.” So Tesla’s recent decision to deeply discount across its product range has many scratching their...

In this episode of the d.MBA podcast, we explore the exciting and rapidly-evolving field of artificial intelligence and its potential impacts on the design community and the future of business. We discuss: The latest advances in AI technology and how it is transforming the way we design products, services, and experiences. We also delve into the potential risks and opportunities that AI presents for businesses and designers, and offer insights on how to navigate this rapidly-changing...

How can we best align the goals of employees and owners? It’s an age-old problem of a principal-agent relationship. But there is a promising trend that could really align incentives between employees and owners. It’s by making employees owners! We decided to invite two d.MBA alumni, Sandra Fernandez and Chris How to share how employee ownership works in their companies. We talked about: what even are employee-owned companies, what are the benefits and drawbacks for employees and...

In the latest Designer in Nature Talking Business, we are hosting Elisabeth Graf, a service designer, innovation coach, and facilitator. And a d.MBA alumna! Lilly shared how she got into design and learned about the importance of a business concept called opportunity costs. Along the way, we also discussed how she negotiated her salary and got a 50% raise only 3 months after being hired, and why her most hated business buzzword is MVP.

According to the Oxford dictionary, a moat is “a deep, wide ditch surrounding a castle, fort, or town, typically filled with water and intended as a defence against attack”. Ok, basically some kind of defense around the castle. So, how does this concept translate to business? And design work? Martyn Reding, chief design officer at Upzelo and former head of design at Virgin Atlantic, shared how he learned about economic moats and how he uses the concept in designing digital products.

Let’s take a moment of silence. Adobe is acquiring Figma. Judging by Adobe’s previous acquisitions this is surely the end of Figma’s best days, right? But Adobe is promising to keep Figma independent! Should we believe Adobe? But let’s also celebrate. The founder of Patagonia is giving away his company to fight the climate crisis. He is setting a beautiful example of how companies can shift their main stakeholder from stockholders to the society and planet. But it also sets a dangerous...

Most of us have already tried to offset the carbon footprint of our consumption. Maybe you’ve paid to offset your flight, a parcel delivery, or even production of a product you bought. And it made you feel good, right? Well, this episode will make you feel a bit worse. Sorry. But if you are ready to take the red pill listen in and we’ll share: how governments try to force certain industries and companies into decreasing pollution, why do some companies voluntarily offset their carbon...

When you hire a designer to help you on a project, you don't expect them to say: "What if we don't focus on users here?".  Franz shared his story of working on a client project that benefitted from designing for suppliers, not customers. To make his point for focusing on suppliers he used a tool called a value chain. Tune in to Designers in Nature Talking Business, our new podcast format where designers (in nature) share their stories of how they learned or used their favorite business...

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Recently, you may have heard that money is getting more expensive. But how can the money be more expensive? Money is, well, just money. To clarify this business lingo, Alen and Franz break down the current business environment and share what sets the price of money. We talked about: what cheap and expensive capital even means, why is money now getting more expensive, and what implications this has on the business world.

It’s usually a bad sign when currencies take over news. It was no different this July 13th when the news broke that one euro is worth exactly one dollar for the first time in twenty years. The US dollar has been gaining strength against other currencies over the last six months due to various reasons, which we cover in detail in this episode. But the question is: Who benefits from a strong dollar. A strong dollar is good for US companies, right? Well… It is not that simple. Listen in to...

Working as a freelancer comes with opportunities and challenges. One of these challenges is how you position yourself to get the clients you love working with. And secondly, how do you price your services so you can survive and thrive. We invited two d.MBA alumni and design freelancers (well, they prefer the term contractors - more about that in the show), Tom Prior and James Bickerton to share their experience. We talked about: how James charges $7,500 for a 90-minute workshop when...

There is a saying in business that if a company is trying to prove that it is a monopoly, then it is not one. But if a company is trying to prove that it is not a monopoly, it may very well be. Holding a monopoly gives a company an unfair advantage, which is good for the company but usually bad for consumers and society as less (or no competition) leads to less (or no) innovation. Lately, Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple are all facing legal actions to hinder their monopolistic position....

Surely, most of us would agree that a 4-day work week is a good idea, right? Early research shows no drop in productivity, and a big increase in employee well-being. So, why hasn’t it been more widely adopted? At the d.MBA, we’ve been running a 4-day work week for the last four years. So, we thought we would comment on some common concerns about the setup and share our perspective. Tune in to learn the most common arguments against the 4-day work week, and learn from our story how you could...

The prices of tech companies have fallen dramatically. Facebook, Netflix, Google, Apple, and Amazon are all down between 20 and 80% since their record highs. Yikes. Everyone is freaking out. But why? How does a market crash affect companies and us working for them? How does this affect designers? In this Business Design Jam, we talked about: the recent (mini?) market crash in the tech sector, why Netflix’s stock price is down almost 80%, and what Netflix can (and plans to) do about...

Have you ever hired a freelancer and paid them per hour? And did you have the feeling that they are extending their scope of work so they could charge you more? Then, you have already experienced misaligned incentives, which are one of the biggest challenges and opportunities for companies. They can hurt relationships within companies and damage partnerships with outside collaborators. In our latest podcast episode, we explore how incentives affect the work of designers and why we are in a...

Business design is already pretty common among design agencies but not so much in product companies. So, we were excited to talk to Andrew Whelan, a Business Design Director at the D-Ford London Lab, where he leads a diverse and multi-skilled team tackling some of the biggest business model opportunities in the auto and mobility industry. We covered: what the role of business designers at D-Ford entails, Andrew’s favorite business design tools, and how to make the case for the...

Last week, we launched new school certificates. Using a combination of generative art and blockchain, we created several hundred unique certificates so that each student can receive a piece of art that is wall-worthy and trustworthy. To learn more about the project check out the blog post with visual materials. In this podcast episode, I spoke with Emil from design studio Ljudje, which helped us bring these beautiful certificates to life. We covered: How the certificates were designed...

In this Business Design Jam, we talked about NFTs (Non-fungible tokens) and what new business models they will enable. Franz Emprechtinger and Alen Faljic covered: digital art and recurring revenues, fractionalization, distributed ownership, and crowdfunding, community and network effects, and internet native cooperations - DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations).   www.d.mba

Aarron Walter is Director of Product on the COVID Response team at Resolve to Save Lives. Previously, he was VP of Content at InVision, and founded the UX practice at Mailchimp where he helped grow the product from a few thousand users to more than 10 million. He's the author of a number of books, the latest of which is a second edition of Designing for Emotion.