ad: Annual 2024 Now Open For Entries!
*

Picking the bristles from Hedgehog Lab | #CompanySpotlight

Published by

Hedgehog Lab is a global digital product studio that partners with brands and enterprises to help them achieve their business goals using emerging technologies on the web, mobile and connected platforms.

With over a decade’s experience in engineering, design and product development, they are experts at delivering digital solutions that deliver real, demonstrable business impact for its partners, which have included AJ Bell, Kodak Alaris & Deliveroo.

The company, which has been named "Newcastle's Best Company to Work For" by ratings site Glassdoor, takes its name from Jim Collins’ book Good to Great, which features the ‘hedgehog concept’ of cultivating ‘piercing clarity’ in the pursuit of long-term results while rejecting propositions that ‘fail the hedgehog test’.

To talk hedgehog tests and everything else, we sat down with Sarat Pediredla, CEO & Co-founder of Hedgehog Lab, to shine our company spotlight on this very special group of people.

*

How was your company born and where are you based?

In 2007, my co-founder Mark Forster and I had a radical idea that we could build a company whose purpose was to create a place that empowers talented people to do the best work of their life (irrespective of what the work was) and we decided to go out and prove that idea. The company has global offices in London, Boston and Sofia but our headquarters and our founding city is Newcastle Upon Tyne.

What was the biggest challenge to the growth of your company?

As a digital product studio based in a small city in North East England, the biggest challenge to our growth was finding customers and having a brand presence that attracted customers. We have worked on our marketing strategy & investment over the years to ensure we are a globally recognised brand that customers reach out to.

Which was the first huge success that you can remember?

*

Our biggest success and break was when we were approached to build an iPad app for Jamie Oliver’s new television show “Jamie’s 15 Minute Meals”. The show was very popular and broadcast on Channel 4, which made the app very successful winning a string of awards.

What’s the biggest opportunity for you and your company in the next year?

There is a big drive in the Financial Services sector to accelerate digital transformation but a severe lack of skills. Our opportunity is to meet this demand for skills and help our customers deliver innovative products.

Can you explain your team’s creative process? What makes it unique?

What makes our team’s creative process unique is 2 key things:-

1) We co-create with our customers. We work collaboratively with our customers to come up with solutions.

2) We blend disciplines of customer research, design excellence, product strategy, and engineering quality to ensure the digital products we create are more rounded and not just great “tech” or “design”.

How does your team remain inspired and motivated?

*

We don’t take the inspiration or motivation of our team for granted. We have active strategies driven by our leadership and people & culture teams to ensure our team as constantly engaged, inspired and motivated.

It is a fallacy that just creating a great culture in a fixed point of time allows your team to be motivated over the long term. It takes work every day in little things like 1-2-1s, meetings, ways of working etc to keep this constantly at the top of the agenda. We are proud to have a People & Culture team that are brilliant at this.

How has COVID-19 affected your company?

Covid-19 had a severe impact on us as a business as most of our customers in 2020 were in the travel & transportation sector. We lost 72% of our business overnight due to the pandemic. It took a lot of resilience, grit and hard work for the company to build back up and we are on track to deliver 40% growth this year.

Which agencies do you gain inspiration from? Do you have any heroes in the industry?

There are lots of peers and competitors I admire. I really admire what ustwo have been doing in the industry and shaping their own unique way in the agency world. I love how Kin + Carta have gone on the journey to a B-Corp and built a public business that has sustainability and inclusion at it’s heart.

What is one tip that you would give to other agencies looking to grow?

Get your proposition right with a clear focus. Don’t try to do everything for everyone. Finally, always be marketing.

How do you go about finding new clients/business? (Pitching, work with retainers, etc.)

*

The majority of our new business comes from word of mouth, networking and inbound enquiries. We are fortunate that we have built a reputation and history for being great at digital products across the industry.

What’s your one big hope for the future of the industry?

I hope that the industry moves away from a race to the bottom where procurement and customer teams are constantly trying to drive “pricing innovation” to truly valuing the outcomes and difference the digital product industry is making to business. Today, every business is a tech business and part of that story are digital product agencies.

Do you have any websites, books or resources that you would recommend?

Two books that have defined by business journey. Good to Great by Jim Collins which defines the hedgehog concept and how we got out name, and Mindset: The Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck.

Comments

More Workshop

*

Workshop

Obsessing over the Story with Wardour #CompanySpotlight

This week, we sat down with Martin MacConnol, Founder and CEO at the Covent Garden-based creative agency Wardour. How was your company born and where are you based? We began life as a content marketing agency on Wardour Street, Soho, in 1996 - the...

Posted by: Creativepool Editorial
*

Workshop

The anxiety attacking earplugs #CreativeCaseStudy

Design agency Matter has collaborated with University of the Arts London to develop a concept for a bio-inspired sustainable earplug using the natural form of a helix to reduce material needed to efficiently block out sound. The concept takes...

Posted by: Benjamin Hiorns
ad: Annual 2024 Now Open For Entries!