Category: Innovation & business

2 things I jotted down during an event I spoke at 2 weeks ago. 1. Startups and VCs need to be near their customers. 2. VCs in the UK are like football season ticket holders, they always think they know best but have never actually tried playing professionally. Most VCs in the US in tech… Continue reading On roundabout vs valley

I’ve just launched Curious Scarves today and lots of people are commenting on the price. That’s good. People aren’t commenting on the idea. This is the second thing I make for sale. The first one was Topoware. I learnt that there are a few ways to go about making things for the world and have… Continue reading Curious Scarves: thoughts on the costs of making things

A little self-indulgent but was quite cathartic, so there (all my notes are there, just click through to Slideshare). 9 things no one told me about running a business View more presentations from Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino

I gave a talk last week which was a bit of a mess. It was my first talk based on new material since 2007 if you consider I’ve been banging on about ubicomp, internet of things and smart product design since 2004. It’s not that I’m no longer interested in those topics, but the luxury… Continue reading On research, collaboration and robots

So yeh, you might have read, Tinker closed. Unlike people who leave large corporate jobs and write a final farewell blogpost, I’m at loss for what would be appropriate to say here seeing as I co-founded the thing. I like What Jeff Bezos said: ” I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that,… Continue reading Minimizing regrets & new beginnings

Sometimes feels like this. Rendez-vous (Claude Lelouch 1976) – kewego Itinéraire Bd Périphérique · Avenue Foch · Place Charles-de-Gaulle · Av des Champs-Elysées · Place de la Concorde · Quai des Tuileries · Place du Carrousel · Rue de Rohan · Avenue de l’Opéra · Place de l’Opéra · Rue Halévy · Rue de la… Continue reading Driving a business

(Ok so this particular post is inspired by the fact that we now have a *gulp* collective meeting room on our floor.) I am starting to hate post-its. Mostly because they require a wall to stick them on or a flipchart, a whiteboard and a collection of otherwise horrible office furniture to make post-its work… Continue reading Ikea and coffee: Thoughts on innovation hubs

A bit of an update if you don’t follow my company’s blog. We’ve rebranded our UK studio to Tinker with a new url, new logo, corporate colours and everything ( for official release check out the official blog post) which was the result of more than a year’s worth of work in figuring out exactly… Continue reading Tinker: an exercise in branding.

I realised I don’t write very often about my day job here, perhaps because this feels like a different space that I can use to talk about the meta-job of running a company. Last year, I wrote about running a business but I’m very interested in the dynamics of running a design studio at the… Continue reading Running a studio (comment 2)