About 
This case is about my experience as a Product Innovation Manager at Imaginarium, a Brazilian design and decoration brand.

Type of work
Team leadership, Service Design, Product Strategy and Project Management.

Date
2015 - 2019
A short version of what you will read here
I am looking for new projects and I believe that nothing we live is thrown away: our baggage goes with us. 
I worked for 12 years at Imaginarium, in the last 5 years as manager of the new Product Innovation area, responsible for the brand's product strategy. I gathered here some results delivered and lessons learned for the challenges I faced during my leadership experience of this team.
The beginning
Between 2015 and 2019 I led the new Product Innovation team at Imaginarium, the biggest design and decoration brand in Brazil, with more than 200 stores across the country.
This division was responsible for delivering the brand's product strategy and acting as the hub between the Product Design and Development, Marketing and Planning teams.
My team was very lean and our routine had a start up pace within the structure that already existed in the company. Our mission was based essentially on seeking the following results:
1. Ensure consistency in the brand's product strategy
What is the role of each product within the portfolio, in line with the brand proposition and business needs?

2. Bring freshness to the portfolio, with new products categories
What kind of product can we launch that can bring innovation to the brand?

3. Speed ​​up the product development process
How to overcome the barriers of the traditional 6-months product development timeline?
Mapping touchpoints and understanding the value of our team's delivery

My journey began with the challenge of learning how to work between management and leadership. At the same time that I had to create and test processes for the new area, I also needed to develop the team's culture.

To work with this scenario, the first step was to understand the product strategy within a systemic view, talking to all other stakeholders and areas directly or indirectly involved in this process and looking for opportunities for improvement. It was a real job of Service Design, understanding all the touchpoints and the value of our delivery from inside the company to our final customer.
Based on this blueprint, we were able to design the area's management, implementing and updating routines and processes, in order to eliminate silos to work in a more collaborative way. Some changes and numbers that came from this process:
Of course, this path was not always a bed of roses. I experienced two very tough years in Brazilian retail, between 2018 and 2019, working every day with the hard task of reinventing this brand and keeping it alive in an increasingly pulverized market.
Many projects did not work, but I understood the value of developing a team made by people who can learn fast and rebuild a new plan. Besides this huge learning, here come other things that I bring from this journey:
1. A shared vision is priceless

It was during this time, with hands-on learning, that I created my definition of what leadership is: the ability to bring people together to create a shared vision, which makes the team proud and capable of delivering results in which everyone grows. Leadership is proposing a win-win game.
Our vision was to provide an excellent service to all areas at Imaginarium so that they could also make tangible the brand's value proposition - that was to surprise and bring joy to people's lives. Developing this work with a new team, apart from an 11-hour time zone, with such significant deliveries for the company was extremely challenging: a continuous process of looking for new ways to improve what we did.
However, it was gratifying to the same level. I saw a team of 3 people become 5 and, when I left the company, they would already become 7. I was directly involved in the training of 3 other leaders during this process that today are responsible for the company's product strategy and contribute to the growth of the brand. Here's the win-win game :)
2. Honor Design as an approach

I believe in the value of Design as an approach to solving problems, as a way out of linear thinking to a systemic and interdisciplinary version, which before proposing the solution investigates if that is the real problem to be solved.
I was lucky that Imaginarium had a fantastic Design leadership at the C-level, which always increased the depth of discussions within the business strategy.
Once this space was conquered, I had to honor it in the routine of the base teams, making it even more mature and showing daily the value of Design besides the aesthetics, a way of thinking that brings results, through a lot of conversation, empathy and advocating for people.
I often say that in many occasions my best role as a designer at Imaginarium was not to create a best-selling product but to gather people from different areas at a table to discuss and build solutions. This learning has often brought more returns, including financial ones, for the company in the medium term.
It was with this vision in mind that I could join discussions on creating new business acquisitions and changes in the company's strategy.
3. Foster a culture in which the will to learn is as important as the outcome

Knowledge management in a company is a watershed between what it is today and what its future can bring. Fostering a culture in which learning is as important as the final result ensures that nothing is stagnant. One foot in today and one eye in tomorrow.
To put this into practice, it is necessary not only to make room for risk but also to see the value of learning brought with it. At Imaginarium, we carried the responsibility of the brand's job-to-be-done: translating an emotion that someone wants to convey into a physical product.

Unlike the digital world where prototyping, testing, and iterating is a faster cycle, for us, the challenge has always been to understand how we could validate our ideas, especially the newest ones, before launching an item, in the shortest possible time, without jeopardizing the product development.
Facing this work was only possible with several tests so that a lot of things worked out - and also got wrong. Many products sold below expectations and we got over-stocked, we underestimated the development time of some items and we also had to make some recalls (and managing a product recall alone is like getting a degree in resilience and humility). But, we developed a culture in the team in which we knew how to manage the knowledge that an error brings to do better in the next campaign, without being afraid of risking to create the new one.
Having built this history is something that makes me really proud. A journey marked by a lot of learning on innovation, leadership, and culture, conquered in practice, with people who taught me about how to seek continuous growth in what I deliver. That's what is in my baggage, waiting for the next destination. 🥳
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