For today’s Company Spotlight, we’re talking to Dave Dunlop, Partner and Chief Design Officer at Else, an award-winning strategic design consultancy that helps businesses create innovative and effective products and services.
How was your company born and where are you based?
Else was founded in 2010 by Warren Hutchinson. I’d previously worked with Warren at Oyster > Framfab > LBI and joined in the fun in 2014 to help lead the company. We’re based in London and work across the globe.
We help our clients launch new digital businesses and explore new digital service opportunities. We specialise in digital strategy, user experience, and interaction design, leveraging over two and a half decades of industry experience.
What was the biggest challenge to the growth of your company?
A big challenge to any business growth is access to the right opportunities. We’ve stayed true to our heritage of experience design, we’ve just clarified how we take that to market to try and make it as relevant as possible to the people who buy us.
Talent is the other side to the coin and something we’ve always invested in — attracting A-grade people who can deliver that high-intensity and boundary-pushing work. So, creating a culture for people to thrive is paramount, hence why we invest in R&D and a shorter work week.
Which was the first huge success that you can remember?
A proud moment and a hugely successful client was our work on WeFarm, a network helping to connect 2.5m farmers in developing countries without the internet. We took them from a very basic prototype to market launch, and today WeFarm take $1M in sales through its marketplace every week. These kinds of projects are the ones we love — new and challenging to work out.
What’s the biggest opportunity for you and your company in the next year?
The upcoming year presents an exciting opportunity to expand our R&D program, especially focusing on developing digital solutions like Instinctively, which looks to help people living with dementia and their carers through daily routines.
Our industry is navigating huge disruption and this will continue to create big opportunities next year with recent projects in AI and Web3 keeping us at the forefront of this change.
Can you explain your team’s creative process? What makes it unique?
Co-design and collaboration are at the heart of our approach, with the skill in curating that across - not only our design teams - but with client and partner teams. The beauty of different perspectives coming together to create new things. We have methods we run that are bespoke to Else — many of which are designed to shift a mindset out of viewing the problem from today’s context, into thinking about from an idealised future. From here we can then build that path to achieve the outcome we want.
We are also blended as teams, so although we hold specialisms and expertise in niche aspects of design, it’s about ensuring good tensions happen. We’re focused on outcomes and making sure that the work we do is geared towards creating impact — so this is embedded in the way we work.
How does your team remain inspired and motivated?
I think our R&D programme is a huge source of motivation. We call it Advanced Thinking, and by nature it allows space for people to develop new skills, and interests and test thinking and methods. It’s very rewarding seeing ideas catalyse and people get carried away with products they feel passionate about.
Another is having a healthy intake of new talent coming up from schools and universities. We partner with a number of design colleges, and we also are founding members of Blueprint 1000 - which is looking at addressing the drop-off in children taking up design subjects in schools.
A highlight is our annual retreat where we take the team away for a couple of nights to a secret destination to strategise and refresh ourselves. Normally happens before the summer, we’ve been to some great places like Annecy, Cannes, Madrid and Valencia.
How has COVID-19 affected your company?
The pandemic underscored the importance of digital for many businesses and the continual need to push innovation agendas. For us, it didn’t create an immediate change in the way we worked, but it did for our client teams, which has shifted overall operating models and client engagement. We were already working a shorter work week, which has become far more achievable for other sectors and businesses since COVID.
Of course, like everyone else in the world, we’re working out our hybrid model. But we’re pretty fixed on the idea that the work we do necessitates a high degree of in-person collaboration time, which means we’re more than 50% together at Else.
Which agencies do you gain inspiration from? Do you have any heroes in the industry?
Plenty. I think it’s really important to celebrate the work of our industry and recognise what truly great work is. We’re active in our community, from Warren being the Chair of the Design Business Association to me Chairing the BIMA Creative Council.
What is one tip that you would give to other agencies looking to grow?
Firstly, growth isn’t all about scale. It seems to be an affliction of our industry that we measure success and growth on how large an agency is, rather than it’s integrity and what it stands for. Instead, focus on cultivating a unique culture that nurtures creativity throughout the company. Invest in research and development to stay ahead and help your clients stay ahead.
How do you go about finding new clients/business? (Pitching, work with retainers, etc.)
Doing great work and being helpful and supportive to clients as they try to instigate change has been the reason we have long-standing relationships and why clients come back to us again and again. The rest is a secret. But we only pitch under certain circumstances as it’s a huge waste of money and resources to both clients and agencies.
What’s your one big hope for the future of the industry?
Our industry and that of our clients are going through huge and rapid change. Disruption is happening at nearly every angle — technological, financial, and social. My hope is that we take the opportunity as an industry to make things better and be principled in what work we do.
For example, a future where the design industry places a greater emphasis on sustainability and socially responsible practices, aligning design innovation with global environmental and societal needs. We have more power collectively than we think and are an enabler for change to happen.
Do you have any websites, books or resources that you would recommend?
There are books that are culturally important to Else, such as Dan Pink’s Drive, which is always worth going back to. As well as books about mastering a shorter work week, like Alex Soojung-Kim Pang’s Shorter. And Rebel Ideas by Matthew Syed. Aside from books, I find publications like Positive News and The Conversation refreshing ways to look at what’s going on in the world.
