James Marshall: Spinning Fox the product-led design agency

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to James Marshall, managing director of Spinning Fox, a product led design agency focused on helping large and small businesses solve problems more creatively.

James has 11 years of delivery experience and a proven ability to manage super large global accounts having worked for companies including HSBC, Nike, Unilever, PepsiCo, Adidas, Dyson, Samsung, Barclays and Ford. He is passionate about creating tech and operational solutions to solve business and consumer problems and drive opportunities much faster than traditional approaches.

On the podcast, the pair discuss: 1) James’ journey into the design thinking and user experience world, 2) why operational efficiency is so hot right now, 3) the power of taking an outside in perspective, and 4) good problem solving requires for us all to take calculated risk.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• I wasn't that good at school, it didn't suit me very well, but things clicked when I went to university to study graphic design. I worked in my early career as a designer, but I had ambitions to own my own company, but spotted quite quickly that I needed to develop more business skills. I moved to London to work in digital agencies and took a sidewards step into programme leadership, where I worked with incredible clients. That's where I found I was passionate about delivering digital product solutions.
• Spinning Fox was created after we witnessed digital product teams trying to deliver digital products and platforms and fail, which was quite common, and through those failures, you get learnings. We wanted to build a company to create products and use our learnings to solve problems and develop solutions for clients. Underlying that is a love for design and tech and using it to solve problems.
• At a high level, the approach we try to take is firstly around discovery, immersing ourselves in our client's world. We can fast track that process through doing some mini-workshops, meeting with stakeholders, meeting the user, ideally, to understand the opportunity as quickly as possible and then defining things, identifying the user’s needs, pain points, and starting to work out the solution. Then we move into rapid prototyping and getting into a cycle of testing and iterating, getting feedback from the user as quickly as possible before moving into implementation. We have full end-to-end delivery capabilities with our team of engineers and QA baked into our process. 
• We've had instances where the best solution for the client is something we can't do, but we'll work with them as a partner and find a third party to work with and help support in delivering that. We're not afraid to say that. We won’t always engineer things to force it into the areas where we have significant expertise and prior knowledge. It’s about being honest and transparent with a client.

BEST MOMENTS

‘I learned early that if I wanted something, I had to work for it.’
‘Spinning Fox is a collective of technologists, innovators, strategists, designers, all with one shared passion: Solving problems. That's how we deliver value to our clients.’
‘Everything we do puts the customer at the heart of everything throughout the process to validate that we're on the right track.’
‘There's no time to stand still as a digital product agency. If you do, then you’ll become a dinosaur in five minutes. You have to be very aware of what's happening in the future. Being able to adapt your business model quite quickly is key.’

ABOUT THE GUEST

James Marshall is a delivery specialist passionate about creating tech and operational solutions to business and consumer problems or opportunities. He is motivated by working in an environment of like-minded multi-disciplinary teams.

With 11 years of delivery experience James has a proven ability to manage projects with values over £1m for global accounts including HSBC, Nike, Unilever, PepsiCo, Adidas, Dyson, Samsung, Barclays and Ford.

Programme management of projects including product and service design, experiential, interactive retail, digital within visitor attractions, large scale web/app builds, end-to-end customer experience strategy and business transformation.

Experience implementing process and operational improvements and training teams to run projects using Agile delivery techniques. Fully certified ScrumMaster and DSDM AgilePM with strong and agile experience.

Strong client servicing skills through working as the main client contact across many projects and accounts.

Strategic thinker and problem solver with the ability to use knowledge and experience to generate new business opportunities and deliver against client goals for programmes of work.

Email: jmarshall@spinningfox.com 

Website: https://www.spinningfox.com/ 

ABOUT THE HOST

Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner. 

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