#27 Design Is Your Best Growth Strategy

"Johan… you know I’m not a designer, but after ten years in communication and product development, I’ve seen how much better things go when skilled designers are involved from the start. Yesterday, a new client dismissed my points, and I struggled to find the right words to convince him. Have you written anything I can use?"

Last week, a former colleague asked me for a compelling argument on why design should be integrated early in a product development startup. There’s a lot to be said, but the core of my argument boils down to ensuring we solve the right problems in the right way.

Design and the Art of Problem Solving

His question reminded me of my first year at University when I read Russell Ackoff’s fantastic book The Art of Problem Solving.

In a building where people complained about slow elevators, forcing people to wait in the lobby. The initial assumption was that speed or capacity needed to be increased. However, technical and financial limitations made this unfeasible. Engineers explored adding more elevators, optimizing movement, or even automating the system—but none of these solutions were practical.

Yet, two weeks later, at a cost of only $500, the problem was solved. How? By shifting focus from speed to the user experience. The real issue wasn’t slow elevators; people were bored while waiting. The simple, elegant solution? Mirrors were installed in the elevator lobbies, giving people something to do while they waited. The complaints vanished almost overnight.

This story, if I remember correctly, dates back to the 1950s or 1960s and highlights a fundamental principle of good design: the real problem isn’t always the obvious one. Solutions should be guided by deep insights into user needs, not just by what appears to be broken at first glance. This same logic applies to product development—without design, startups often build solutions for symptoms rather than root causes.

Design Reduces Risk and Prevents Costly Mistakes

Startups are in the business of making bets. Every decision—about what to build, how to build it, and how to bring it to market—carries risk. Early design work reduces these risks by ensuring you are solving the right problems for the right people. Without design, many teams build based on assumptions, leading to costly pivots when they realize users don’t actually need or want what was built.

Design Aligns Teams Around User and Business Goals

In the early stages, startups are filled with competing ideas from founders, engineers, investors, and stakeholders. Design provides a structured way to synthesize these inputs, ensuring that product decisions align with user needs and business objectives. By visualizing concepts through, e.g., prototypes and user journeys, design creates clarity, prevents misalignment, and saves time spent debating abstract ideas.

Design Helps Startups Move Faster, Not Slower

A common misconception is that design adds time and slows down development. In reality, good design accelerates progress by streamlining decision-making. Quick, low-cost iterations in design prevent high-cost rework in engineering. Developers can work with confidence when they have clear, validated user flows rather than vague feature requests.

Good Design Isn’t About Looks—It’s About Problem-Solving

Many skeptics view design as mere aesthetics, but the real power of design is its problem-solving approach. Just like the elevator problem, where the true issue wasn’t slow speed but user frustration, design is about uncovering the real obstacles, not just the obvious ones. It’s about encouraging teams to deeply understand users, test assumptions, and iteratively improve solutions. This approach isn’t just for the user interface—it applies to business models, onboarding flows, pricing strategies, and even internal processes.

Bringing design in early isn’t about hiring a designer and leaving them to do the work in isolation. It’s about instilling the mindset of user-centered problem-solving across the whole team—just as the elevator solution required a shift in perspective. The best startups don’t just "have" designers—they think like designers, continuously asking, ‘What is the real problem we’re solving?’

The Bottom Line

So, back to the question—why bring design in early? Design is not a luxury—it’s a strategic function. It reduces risk, aligns teams, and speeds up execution. The earlier it’s integrated, the greater the impact—ensuring that startups spend their limited resources on building something that truly works.

If you frame design in this way—as a tool for clarity, speed, and risk reduction—even the most skeptical founders and engineers will start to see why it’s not just an extra, but an essential part of building a successful product.

I hope this gives you the arguments you need. If you want to discuss it further or need more examples, let me know. Good luck with the conversation!