Navigating the Currents of Change: Mastering Disruption, Design Thinking, and Customer-Centric Innovation

In this Throwback Thursday (TBT) edition of The Disruptor Podcast, we delve deep into the whirlwind world of digital disruption, design thinking, and the critical importance of a customer-centric approach to innovation.

Join hosts Jan Almasy and John Kundtz,  alongside special guest Nicholas Jayanty, as they explore the intricate dance between disrupting and being disrupted in today’s fast-paced digital landscape.

What You'll Learn:

The Essence of Value Creation: Discover how businesses navigate the complex terrain of delivering value not just to themselves but, more importantly, to their customers. 

Disruptor’s Insights: Kundtz has witnessed the rise and fall of industry giants to help startups navigate these turbulent waters. He provides a unique perspective on the digital age's challenges and opportunities.

Design Thinking at Its Core: Nicholas Jayanty, a principal UX researcher, discusses his transition from the independent film industry to IT and how design thinking has become pivotal in addressing customer needs and driving innovation.

From Empathy to Transformation: This episode highlights the journey from understanding customer needs (empathy) to effectively implementing solutions that significantly improve their experiences (transformation).

Real-World Applications: Through anecdotes and experiences, the conversation illuminates the practical application of design thinking and customer-centric strategies in overcoming sales hurdles and fostering product development that genuinely meets user needs.

Navigating Disruption: Learn how companies, from startups to tech giants, employ design thinking and customer-centric approaches to survive and thrive amid ongoing digital disruption.

This episode is a must-listen for those looking to deepen their understanding of leveraging disruption for growth and creating meaningful, user-focused products and services.

Subscribe to The Disruptor Podcast for more insights into the ever-evolving world of technology, innovation, and disruption. 

Stay ahead of the curve as we bring you stories, strategies, and expert opinions to help you navigate the currents of change.

Stay tuned for part 2

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Episode Transcript

Nicholas Jayanty (00:00):
It really kind of boils down to that question
and curiosity around value.
The business has a goal theywant to make revenue, they want
to expand market share.
That's value to the business,but then there's value to the
customer right.
What business goal are theytrying to solve?
Are they trying to, you know,increase their own market share,
increase their own customersatisfaction, increase their own
revenue?
And how does you know a productkind of fit into an

(00:21):
enterprise's ability to actuallydeliver the value that the
customer expects?

Jan Almasy (00:33):
Welcome to another episode of the Apex Podcast, and
we are here today bringing backthe Disruptor.
I'm super, super excited tohave John Coons back in the
studio with us again today.
John, how was your week?

John Kundtz (00:45):
My week has been a bit crazy.
As always, it's the end of themonth, end of the quarter, so,
as we like to say in the companyI work for, it's the most
important quarter in the historyof our company, until next year
or next quarter.

Jan Almasy (01:00):
So for everybody that has, you know, listened to
the Disruptor episodes in thepast but may be joining us for
the first time, why don't youjust introduce yourself a little
bit, and then we can dive intowhat our segment is going to be
today?

John Kundtz (01:11):
My real name is John Coons.
I go by the Disruptor.
I have a 37-year career ininformation technology, so, as
my friend Nicholas, who I willintroduce in a minute, has
coined, I've seen the waves ofdisruption over the years, and
so what I like to talk about onthese podcasts is sort of you're

(01:34):
either thus being disrupted oryou are the Disruptor.
In other words, you are eithera Airbnb or you're the hotel
industry.
You're either the taxicabindustry or you're the ubers of
the world, or, my favorite is,you're either Blockbuster or
your Netflix, and so we are in aperiod of extreme digital

(01:55):
disruption, and so this showtends to try to discuss those
experiences and those storiesfrom the field and try to
empower people that areentrepreneurs to depth in their
skills and design thinking, andanybody that potentially is a
naysayer maybe try to give it asecond look.
And so that's why today I'vegot one of my close colleagues

(02:17):
and good friends, nicholas, whoused to work with me directly
until he defected to a differentpart of our company.
So, nicholas, final chance tointroduce yourself for me,
please.

Nicholas Jayanty (02:28):
Thanks so much for having me today.
My name is Nicholas Jayanti.
I'm a principal UX researcherat one of the world's largest
open source enterprise softwarecompanies.
Prior to that, I had theopportunity to work with John at
another large technologycompany where we had the
opportunity to help a lot of ourcustomers kind of navigate

(02:49):
digital transformation and kindof move a little bit more nimbly
than larger organizationstypically move and give the
context of whether you're thedisruptor or the disrupted.
It's important to accelerateyour time to market and get
those things sorted out so youdon't end up in the same spot as
the taxi company blockbuster orthe hotel industry.

John Kundtz (03:09):
Those of you that have probably heard us before, a
little bit of background on howwe got Nicholas and I got
working together.
So five years ago actually, webought a company.
We bought a startup company inAustin, texas, and it was a
pretty innovativetransformational company that
helped with the management ofcloud and cloud workloads and

(03:29):
those kind of things, and it wasvery comprehensive and almost
looked at cloud management as asupply chain.
So sort of from cradle to grave, if you will, we went out and
started selling it and we gotpeople excited.
And again, much of what we'regoing to talk about today is
sort of how you pull some ofthese concepts into from the

(03:50):
product management, the UX, theUI world into the sales world.
Sort of how Nicholas and I gotconnected is we started trying
to sell this stuff.
We got a lot of excitement, wegot a lot of interest and then
all of a sudden people would askthings like well, how much is
the cost, how long does it take?
And of course we were trying tosell this sort of old fashioned
waterfall, the whole shoot andmatch kind of a solution, and

(04:15):
all of a sudden our sales sortof pipeline just stopped.
We just the progression ofdeals just came to a screeching
halt and I got a bunch of peopleway smarter than me and
Nicholas was I didn't hadn't methim yet, but some of his
colleagues and cohorts.
We got in a room in Austin andwe started coming up with this
idea of what if we startedlooking at this from a

(04:37):
user-centric approach, a humansort of centric design approach.
And we came up with this ideaand we started.
I had no design background.
I'm not a designer, I don'tprofess to be one, I'm just an
old, crusty consultantsalesperson.
Long story short, we did a fewof these workshops, we took some
approaches and we realized wewere onto something and but we

(04:58):
also realized we needed helpfrom an expert.
And there go, we pulledNicholas in.
One of the things I want to sortof sort of talk about is sort
of the value of design thinkingand the experience or the
experience disruptor.
But before I get into that, Iwant to tell a little story.
This is something I puttogether actually over a year
ago and it's sort of the themethat I want to sort of start to

(05:20):
play out, nicholas, with you issort of how do you get from
empathy to transformation andreally a lot of this podcast
that we geared to smallbusinesses, startups and
entrepreneurs, and so why isthis, you know, sort of really
important now in today's world,and so just bear with me
everybody.

(05:40):
It's sort of want to take youthrough, sort of.
I put this together back inMarch of 2020 and it's like what
was my typical day during COVIDand so, like most of you, I
probably my diet was not sogreat and I sort of put on some
weight, and so every morning Iwould get up on weigh myself and

(06:00):
I had the scale that actuallysends all my statistics to my
phone.
Of course I was monitoring allmy sleep statistics with the
help application.
I get up, of course I'm old, soI gotta go find my glasses and
I'm searching the house for myWerby Parker glasses.
I brew a cup of coffee or two orthree or maybe four on my sort

(06:21):
of cool looking curate coffeemaker.
I shave with these the stuff Iget every month from Dollar
Shave Club.
Might listen to some music or apodcast like this on Spotify.
Get to work.
I start to communicate with myteam on things like Slack, work,

(06:43):
my network on LinkedIn.
Of course, there was neverending video.
Still are never ending videoconferences.
After a long day, I order somefood from DoorDash.
I get a bunch of packagesdelivered, right?
I use this example because Igotta have a dog and I wanna
make sure my four-legged friendsare taken care of.
I might do a little bingewatching on Netflix and then,

(07:07):
after a long day of what knowsat that time sheltering in place
, I fall asleep on my Caspermattress, and so you might go
well.
So who cares?
Why is this story relevant?
And why now and it really comesdown to because all of these
are experienced disruptors right, we buy these products from

(07:27):
people because they give us agood experience.
They may or may not be anybetter or any even cheaper than
others start other companies,but we buy them because of the
experience.
So this is actually one of thethings that Nicholas taught me
early on.
Right, this coffee pot is notan experience, but this is an

(07:48):
experience.
Right, starbucks creates anexperience, and by doing that
they can get you.
You'll still pay $5 for adollar cup of coffee.
So it's no longer a distinctionand this is a quote from a VP
at IBM.
There's no longer any realdistinction between organization
strategy and their design, inother words, the best experience

(08:11):
that anyone anywhere has is theone they had last.
So if you're not working onproviding a great experience and
oh, by the way, that's not justbuilding your product and your
services, it's providing anexcellent sales experience Tell
us about this whole notion andhow you sort of came about
getting into this design world.

Nicholas Jayanty (08:32):
It's interesting.
I came to the practice ofdesign actually from an
independent film background.
Prior to working in IT.
I was producing independentfilms with documentary and
narrative, had some films do thefestival circuit World Premiere
at Sundance South by SouthwestSeattle International Film

(08:52):
Festival got some New York Timescritical acclaim and it was
really interesting because, whenI reflect back on it as an
independent producer, my enduser is a director.
Right, I'm there to supporttheir vision.
I'm there to help removeblockers.
I'm there to help them get theright resources they need to
communicate that vision, whetherthat's people, money, time et

(09:13):
cetera.
But what's interesting is thatthe directors in the independent
film space that I had theopportunity to work with thought
very little about theiraudience.
They very much more are takingmore of an inside out point of
view where I have this I'm anartist, I have this vision that
I wanna express.
I'm an a chore, meaning I'm theonly one qualified to express

(09:35):
that vision because of my uniquelived experience and I feel
like the story is reallyimportant and so I'm gonna
invite 300 people to sit in atheater in the dark next to each
other and not talk, because thestory I have to tell is so
important and it's kindainteresting when you start to
apply that point of view to thetechnology.
A lot of times, a lot of thesecompanies and one of the reasons

(09:56):
I started my design career atthe United States Geological
Survey and then moved on to IBMbecause one of the things that
IBM was doing by investing theyinvested $100 million in
bringing human-centered designto the core of their
organization is because theyrealized that there's a lot of
really great visionaries thatare creating technology, looking
for a problem to solve.

(10:16):
Design is brought into IBMreally to help reframe that Say
what are the unmet needs outthere?
What do our customers need,what are the things that they're
struggling with and how do wedevelop technology to actually
meet that need, as opposed todevelop technology and then look
for a problem to solve.
It's inverting that point ofview from an inside out point of

(10:39):
view to an outside in point ofview.
As a user experiencepractitioner and researcher, a
lot of the work that I do,before we even get into the
tactical aspects of it, is justhelping people reframe how they
think about value.
Value is co-created.
Like John was saying.
The coffee pot example thevalue isn't created just by the

(11:03):
coffee pot object.
The value is actually realizedwhen I take that sip of coffee
in the morning.
It's beautiful outside, maybeI'm reading paper, maybe I'm
sitting with my partner andwe're enjoying that moment
together.
That's what the value of thatcoffee pot actually gets
manifested.
It's important for us to thinkthat, a value in the sense that
it doesn't exist until a personpicks up that coffee pot, uses

(11:24):
it and sips.
The outcome of that object.

John Kundtz (11:27):
Tell me a little bit about how you work.
Design in the research modethat you've been, like I said,
was really what we hired you todo and I hijacked you to go
actually out and talk tocustomers and try to help you
sell stuff.

Nicholas Jayanty (11:43):
You might have smelled my former producing hat
.
Definitely love to sell stuff,but it really boils down to that
question and curiosity aroundvalue.
The business has a goal.
They want to make revenue.
They want to expand marketshare.
That's value to the business.
But then there's value to thecustomer.
What business goal are theytrying to solve?

(12:05):
Are they trying to increasetheir own market share, increase
their own customer satisfaction, increase their own revenue?
And how does a product fit intoan enterprise's ability to
actually deliver the value thatthe customer expects?
But beyond that, a lot of timesin the enterprise context the
customer the person that'spurchasing the software or the
product isn't the end user.

(12:25):
Value is subjective.
What's valuable to a VP ofinformation technology or
information technologyoperations may not be valuable
to the developer or the assistadministrator that's trying to
use the tool.
Being able to collaborate withJohn gave us a real world
context in terms of what valuelooks like and how end users

(12:47):
actually articulate value intheir own words, which is a very
powerful thing.
When someone can sit down andwrite a value proposition of
what would be valuable to themin their role, you're getting
the pure assessments of what avalue prop could look like for
the specific end user that'sgoing to have their hands on the
software.
In our collaboration it wasnice to sit shotgun and help

(13:09):
these people articulate whatvalue looks like in their own
language.

John Kundtz (13:12):
I was surprised how and when we started this
approach, that so much of what Ithought was really this whole
idea of co-creation and valueand design thinking.
It's almost like there was thiswall between the product
management, the developers,everybody sort of in the back

(13:33):
office, if you will.
And then all of a sudden we hadthis wall and then everything
was then sort of pushed over tothe front office, if you will
the people knocking on doors,shaking trees, trying to sell
stuff, and we were still tryingto sell, like it was 1985.
You have a sales mentality, butyou were not paid to be a
selling person.

(13:53):
So what did you see from I saidfrom your view or your world,
when you sort of started seeingwhat we were trying to do, both
on the sales side of the house?

Nicholas Jayanty (14:02):
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, at the end of the day,right, your sales team is
communicating a valueproposition and they're
communicating why that valueproposition works for the
context of the customer and as auser experience team, our
responsibility is to deliverthat value, right?
So we've made all thesepromises, we've set all these
expectations.
Now the product actually has tolive up to those promises.

(14:24):
So, having first hand knowledgein terms of the user's, the
customer's context, the valuethat they expect, and then
seeing how you know, being inthe room with the customer and
seeing what they needed, seeingthat how that kind of showed up
in some of the project productmanagement kind of apparatus you
know from like ticketingsystems to requirements.

(14:45):
A lot of the requirements werevery much kind of sanitized from
the customer context.
And there's a balance there,right, where in an offerings
business you're trying tostandardize as much as possible,
meaning I don't want to do abunch of custom solutions, I
want everything to bestandardized.
So you are kind of walking thatline between understanding

(15:08):
customer's needs and thenfiguring out what to prioritize
in your product roadmap.
But you want to find thosepatterns across customers and if
you can find that same needacross five to six customers
versus a one off need for aspecific customer.
You're going to handle thatdifferently, you're going to
prioritize things differentlyand as a researcher, our job is
to kind of identify what arethose patterns across customers

(15:30):
and how do we help our productmanager and our engineering
counterparts understand thosepatterns so that they can make,
you know, prioritizationdecisions on what's going to
come out each quarter.
So a lot of that is outsideendpoint of you.
But then there's the inside outpoint of you that you've got to
navigate right Technical debt,shortcuts that were made to get
the product to market, all ofthe things that the product

(15:50):
management and the engineeringorganization are already
sensitive about.
Perhaps you have executive, youknow vision kind of in entering
the product developmentconversation as well, saying
like I think the market's goinghere.
You know, I read this analystreport and I have a strong
hypothesis.
So how do you balance kind ofthat strong top down kind of
influence, kind of hijackingyour roadmap?

(16:10):
How do you balance customershijacking your roadmap?
And how do you kind oftriangulate all of these
different inputs and outputs tomake sure that what's coming out
each quarter is what yourcustomers are needing or what
your potential new prospects areneeding in order to either
deliver the value of what yousold or close new deals.