Economies of Scale is one of the most fundamental concepts in business, which define how competitive are our organizations. In this episode, we dive deep into what this concept really is and explain: why almost every company wants to grow bigger (and why that is good and bad), why investors dislike service companies, and how to use the keyword “marginal cost” in your next big meeting.   www.d.mba/course

Yancey Strickler, co-founder and ex-CEO of Kickstarter, discusses his vision for more generous capitalism. He emphasizes the need to shift from profit maximization to integrating non-financial values in business. Strickler introduces the Bento method, a framework bridging emotional intuition in design with data-driven decision-making. He also explores the transition to public benefit corporations and shares strategies for fostering change in traditionally profit-focused organizations, empowering designers to elevate their roles within companies.

Last week, Tesla announced that it will let customers buy their cars with cryptocurrency Bitcoin. We break down the business rationale for this decision and use it as a good excuse to introduce business topics such as: three fundamental business documents that designers need to understand (Profit and loss statement, Balance Sheet, and Cashflow statement), what is inflation and when it happens, and what is the difference between a currency and assets?

This is our first ever Guestimation Challenge! It’s a game in which we try to make fast estimations with very little data. For example, estimate how many miles of highway does the US have? Players can only use a calculator, pen, and paper to come as close to the correct number as possible. Without the use of their computer or additional resources. This game imitates a real-world scenario, where we need to estimate numbers for our projects. For example, when we want to understand the size of our competitors, how much revenue our product or service idea could make, etc. The first two contenders are d.MBA mentors, Martina Skender (Innovation consultant) and Brian Wong (Business Designer at FJORD Accenture).

We recently hosted a webinar Prototyping with Numbers. In this episode, we share an audio snippet of the first part of that webinar, where Alen explains how to create numerical prototypes to uncover the viability and feasibility risks of design concepts. You can access a video recording of this webinar here https://d.mba/webinar-prototyping-with-numbers www.d.mba

In this special episode, Alen shares his latest essay on the dilemma between business and design. Many designers are afraid that business literacy will lead them to compromise their values and principles. Alen shares why this is a false dilemma and why in reality the relationship between the two is actually synergistic! www.d.mba/podcast/business-savvy-vs-design-values

In the latest Business Design Jam, Alen is joined by two d.MBA mentors, Jo Roberts (Lead business designer at Designit) and Andreea Strachină (business designer expert at PWC IXDS). They talked about: circular business models and how to apply them to service businesses, how to apply outcome-based pricing to different industries, and how Away founders built a billion-dollar startup by redesigning the arena’s value chain.   www.d.mba

Competitor research is important. It helps us learn about our competitors so we can make better decisions. Decisions that lead to more value created for our customers and our organization. However, when we think about our competitors, we are all making a fundamental logical mistake. We mistake our direct competitors with our only competitors. For example, BMW is not competing just with Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Tesla, Ford, etc. It’s also competing with airlines, railway companies, and soon even with Hyperloop providers. In this Mini MBA episode, Franz (program director at d.MBA) and Alen sit down to talk about the concept of Competitive Arenas and how designers can use it in their work.

In the new Business Design Jam, Alen and Franz, discuss the latest business design stories: how a Michelin 3-star restaurant is not only surviving but even thriving during the coronavirus lockdown, how Universal Studios pioneered a new way to premier movies, and how Airbnb forgot that it is servicing two groups of customers.   www.beyondusers.com/podcast

Rita Gunther McGrath is a world-renowned thought leader and a professor at Columbia Business School. She has received the #1 achievement award for strategy from the prestigious Thinkers50 and has been consistently named one of the world’s top ten management thinkers in its bi-annual ranking. She wrote Discovery-Driven Growth and The End of Competitive Advantage, which are widely used in the business design community. In this podcast we talked about: how and why we should prototype with numbers, why the era of sustainable competitive advantage is over, and how designers can explain “inflection points” to business leaders.