This Week’s Guest: Douglas Ferguson

“May your innovations inspire those who follow.” Douglas Ferguson

Today’s guest has a career that has taken him from working with software to working with humans allowing him to be a leader who helps organizations stay relevant. Douglas Ferguson is an entrepreneur and human-centered technologist with over 20 years of experience. He is president of Voltage Control, an Austin-based innovation workshop agency that specializes in in-person and virtual Design Sprints and Innovation Workshops. He is also the author of three books: Beyond the Prototype, How to Remix Anything (co-authored), and Start Within (co-authored).

Douglas is active in the Austin startup community where he serves on the board of several non-profits, mentors startups, and advises early-stage ventures. Prior to founding Voltage Control, Douglas held CTO positions at numerous Austin startups where he led product and engineering teams using agile, lean, and human-centered design principles. While CTO at Twyla, Douglas worked directly with Google Ventures running Design Sprints and now brings this experience and process to companies everywhere through Voltage Control.

Episode Overview

In this episode Keith shares:

• Why we are living through a huge experiment and the results that can come from this
• How teams can work better together to work at their highest abilities.
• The relationship between design thinking and design sprints.
• Why the design sprint is the first step and how you can move beyond the prototype
• How you can empower the edges and allow everyone to be creative within organizations
• What you didn’t learn in school that you need to know to thrive in the world of work

I hope you all enjoy my conversation with Douglas Ferguson, and as always we’d love if you tag us online and share your thoughts and takeaways.