Business (Un)usual

The last in this little mini-series exploring business unusual, but potentially my favourite.I sit down with Jane ní Dhulchaointigh, founder of Sugru & one of our Mission Guardians at Library of Things, where she gives a voice to Earth.She introduces me to a question that guides her: how would Nature do it?So simple and yet, how often do we ask this question in business?We start with language, sometimes the best place to change the way we think, and then go deeper into the design of business, the governance and how she uses her voice for the planet at Library of Things.Ending with some practical ways we can all start to welcome a little more nature into every business, the ripple effects may well surprise you! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How do you design against the default? How do you change the deeply engrained behaviour of buying stuff we don't really need to own?In this episode, we're switching it around & Charlotte, our marketing lead, asks me the key questions about the service design decisions behind Library of Things: the counter to the norm choice of physical space over an app, the shift from shipping container to self-service kiosks, and why peer-to-peer sharing isn't the obvious solution (we looked hard at it, including some memorable advice from Zipcar's Robin Chase).Together we unpick what it actually took to try to make sharing desirable to the mainstream and why I consider Library of Things a Trojan horse for behaviour change. People come in for a pressure washer or a sewing machine, what they leave with is a completely different relationship with stuff.And the numbers back it up. Over 16 tonnes of electricals stay in use, not landfill, at every location, every year. 70% of our members go on to repair or reuse after their first borrow.There's something in here for anyone looking to create behaviour change. Principles that can be applied anywhere. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

These days early-stage founders assume they need to build their own technology. It's the default. Hiring a CTO seems to be the first thing people do. But what does that assumption actually cost: in money, in flexibility, in the attention you pull away from the mission you set out to solve?In this episode, I sit down with Rob, our Tech Lead (or CTO) at Library of Things, for something of a public "retro". We trace our journey from Excel spreadsheets and asset management software through to our reluctant decision to build our own platform, and then our own custom lockers. We get into the open source question (it sounds like a no-brainer; it isn't), how human-centred means creating the right kind of friction, and what it means to design technology around behaviour change rather than transactions.If you're wondering whether to build, buy, or borrow your tech, this is for you. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why is it more normal to throw something away than to fix it?In this episode, I talk with Jamie Hillier, our Thing Lead at Library of Things, about why that is and what another way looks like. Over the years, Jamie has made repair central to how Library of Things operates, quietly building a template that other businesses could follow.We dig into the real story behind broken things: why planned obsolescence is only part of the picture, the genuine trade-offs manufacturers and repairers both have to make, and what it means to design something that can be fixed over and over again. Jamie shares how he's scaled repair knowledge across a distributed team, the philosophy of care he's developed for the material world, and why the dopamine hit of fixing something might be the most underrated argument for doing it more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So you say that your business has a mission, one that goes beyond shareholder value. But how do you make sure that happens when push comes to shove? Can you make your mission unbreakable: one that’s able to survive investment, growth, an exit or life beyond the founders? In this episode, co-founder Emma Shaw and I talk about why ownership structure isn’t a legal detail, but a design decision about who your business is really for. We share how Library of Things went from a nonprofit to steward-owned and mission-locked, what it meant for raising funds, and what we’d tell any founder who wants to build something that stays true to itself, whatever the weather. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.