Strategy — Kingshuk Das

DESIGN・STRATEGY・INNOVATION

Helping leaders build & transform businesses — digital & analog —around the customer, from the ground up.
New business discovery driven by human-centered innovation — busting silos and combining the talents of data scientists, marketers, strategists, salespeople, designers, & technologists.

It's about refocusing our organizations on the people we seek to serve, and finding opportunities in their needs, habits, mindsets & aspirations — ideas that are hiding in plain sight and become discoverable when we choose to pay attention.

Elevating design to a strategic tool for startups, nonprofits & multibillion $ businesses

Moving beyond incremental aesthetics, brand, & UX improvements

Crafting opportunities big enough to open up new markets

From brain surgery to breakfast cereal, fintech to fizzy beverages, hospitals & clinics to innovation labs, and from tech inventors to supply chain managers — I have worked with incredible leaders to rethink & rebuild their organizations around the customer: products, services, digital platforms, business models — as well as teams, tools, processes & culture.

Powerful things happen when you combine design with other functions — engineering, marketing, sales, strategy, R&D — and move it upstream in corporate decision-making, investment, & direction-setting processes

Designing the business model, not just the product or service

Launched a breakthrough new tech platform with FedEx in 5 global markets. Key unlock: Diagnosing the underlying business model factors affecting adoption among key customer groups. Developed new payment models with Kaiser Permanente that target systemic issues in the healthcare patient journey.

Creating new value-propositions by finding the right customer problems to solve

Envisioned, built, & piloted entirely new financial service platforms at JPMorgan Chase—working with the C-suite & leadership teams across marketing, data-science, IT, & strategy.

Deep research to uncover entirely new businesses—not just improving existing offerings

Created a new healthcare business from the ground up at Steelcase—in 3 years—through a combination of ethnographic human-centered research, business analysis & internal venturing.

Raise the ROI & hit rate of innovation

De-risk new ventures

Move from one-off hits & misses — to balanced innovation portfolios: near-term + breakthrough innovations

Opportunity directions built from the ground up to balance customer + economic value

Design for the C-suite

At world-class innovation consulting firms like IDEO & Jump, and at corporations like JPMC & Steelcase, we raised the impact of design at the highest levels. Working directly with the C-suite, we went beyond incremental improvements to address systemic business challenges impacting strategy, org structure, operations, & culture.

Co-creating internal processes, teams, & culture

Aligning internal structures with customer & market needs. E.g. We worked with Stanford Children’s Hospital to develop a new model for “complex care delivery”—children & families dealing with multiple serious medical conditions at the same time. And with Mayo Clinic to build their first Innovation Lab in Rochester MN.

Designing holistic product + service ecosystems—not just individual offerings

Developed an integrated suite of new offerings with Panasonic—for the aging & senior care market (hardware, software & services) based on new business opportunities discovered through human-centered research and market analysis.

Unlock product-market fit

Shift your startup’s locus from tech to the customer

Discover sources of sustainable differentiation based on unmet human needs & mindsets

Build continuous innovation capabilities into your DNA right from the start

The external customer experience is only as good as an organization’s internal dynamics

Mediated between the C-level leadership teams of 2 competing divisions at one of the largest healthcare providers—to build a shared understanding of their mission, and to re-align their goals & culture around the customer.

Unlocking growth in mature markets & companies

We worked with global food & beverage brands (cereal, soda, snacks & staples) to rediscover relevance in slowing markets. Ethnographic studies helped understand the drivers of social change at the human level. Prototyping new products, positioning, and business models paved paths to renewed relevance.

The customer experience extends beyond “end users” to all influential stakeholders

Developed a next-gen neurosurgery platform strategy with Medtronic (modular product & service bundles), based not only on the needs of surgeons & their extended teams, but also the variable budgets, buying cycles, & purchase agreements of hospitals & clinics of various sizes, rural & urban, across the US.

Operationalize innovation

Scale entrepreneurship through rigorous, repeatable processes that balance the best of creative & critical thinking: exploration + execution

Structured, evidence-based approaches — not random accidents & opinions

Customer-centered rationale for Build/Buy/Partner strategy including M&A decisions

San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA

Elevating design to a strategic tool for startups, nonprofits & multibillion $ businessesMoving beyond incremental aesthetics, brand, & UX improvements