On Design and on Growth

The role of design has expanded in companies, and in Finland in general. Nordkapp’s growth is one of the many manifestations of the phenomenon. For achieving even greater impact, Nordkapp is embracing this growth, while looking to keep doing things in its own way.

For years, design has been about so much more than mere beautification in the final phase of product development. Instead, design has been seen as a crucial factor, which makes people collaborate around challenging problems, co-creating new solutions and making companies future proof.

Our mission is to help companies create relevant future products, better services and to help them become future proof — the best next versions of themselves.

Here, we do our thing in our own way — one of the reasons that made me love working with these brilliant, enthusiastic thinkers and doers at Nordkapp. It is also why our domestic and international customers have trusted us and we’ve been invited to work with companies like ING and Beddit (which Apple acquired!). Stay tuned to hear other international secrets to be revealed later this autumn.

We believe that the best way for a company to prepare for the future is by learning the ability for continuous change in the fast-paced digitalized world. And designers help companies figure out the futures worth thriving for, problems worth solving, and products worth inventing and making.

For us being able to do all this, and to have a bigger impact, we need to grow and develop ourselves continuously, and to learn by experimenting.

We want to grow and growth demands best practices

We need to learn constantly and collectively, do different kinds of projects and synthesise and connect the dots from insights and learnings from projects. Sustainable growth requires focusing on the real problems worth solving. We needs to pick our battles. Help ourselves first to be able to help others.

Growth arises from our own viewpoints. We want to make an impact by great design and spread the message of empathic and transforming design, an democratic and equal approach that stems from the Nordic society. Human centric, rather than technology oriented, way of thinking.

But growth needs practices. Our agency is very self organized, flat, and currently with very little organizational practices. As we grow, we need to hunt for a minimum viable structure that supports our expansion. A structure that fits into our strong culture — the culture that has made us the brilliant design and transformation agency we are.

We will keep all the good we have and and build on top of that. Meaningfulness, visibility, independency, leadership, possibility to choose the cases to join in and the lack of need for management…

Making the future together

Predicting the future is hard — but you can start by making the future right now. While I can’t tell you what Nordkapp will be in 10 years (except that we will be the most influential designer collective in the world), I can tell you that we will continuously refine ourselves and find new adventures to explore and experiment.

When I joined Nordkapp in early summer 2017, it felt like coming home. My background, expertise and interests complement the skills of other Nordkappers. I have had privilege to work both in agencies for demanding customers and in corporations like Elisa and KONE, creating future services and improving existing ones.

Nordkapp is the transformation I want to take part in right now. Let’s make the future together!