Christopher Pross launches ValueForm.
Something happened to experience design.
Previously, agencies and consultancies full of designers tackled business challenges with creative thinking. They were valued for bringing fresh and diverse perspectives. These collaborations led to remarkable outcomes. The thousands of:
- Hours of engagement delivered by Nike Fuel,
- Direct users and their data brought to HBO GO,
- Minutes saved by Disney's Magic Band
And the millions in revenue they generated were all made in partnership with agencies and consultancies.
But now, I can't find those kinds of results. Agents no longer drive outcomes for brands. The role of creative partners has shifted. Agencies and consultancies lost their ability and consequently, permission to help businesses leapfrog their competitors. I plan on taking it back.
Today, most firms fall into two categories:
- The Production Shop: When brands lack in-house teams, firms function as production units or staff augmentation. They follow orders, but novel thinking is absent. Soon you won't need these firms. With the rise of Al development and design tools, production and execution will become cheap and easy.
- Change Champions (not agents): When businesses face big challenges, firms create overly grand solutions that prove nearly impossible to implement. It's "innovation theater," involving navel-gazing, visionary north-star initiatives showcased through non-committal slide decks. It's hard to measure the value of this work - at best, it inspires, and at worst, it's a waste of time and money.
Neither of these alone delivers business outcomes, and they rarely work together or originate from the same firm. There's a gap in the way things are done.
The model is disjointed and broken.
Value needs to be formed. And we won't get there by following orders blindly or cheering from the sideline.
That's why I started ValueForm. So we can return to generating outcomes, not presentations or skinned SaaS software. Some time ago, we moved away from that. ValueForm is going to get there by:
- Setting clear goals. We'll establish specific and measurable outcomes, and our compensation is directly tied to them.
- Providing both the end experience and the system that creates it. We make execution inevitable.
- Embracing problems to be solved rather than solutions to be vetted. During our process, we'll offer multiple answers. Some digital, some not. We don't handicap ourselves when creating business outcomes.
- Being evidence-based. We design experiments and build prototypes to test our assumptions and hypotheses at every stage. When was the last time someone tested a strategy for you?
I invite you to explore ValueForm's approach to how we're changing the game. I am excited about the chance to collaborate and drive tangible outcomes together.
Giving a damn,
Christopher Pross, Managing Partner