Jesse LaMarre
🏃‍♂️

Jesse LaMarre

Venture Building & Design in Copenhagen, he/him

running ops. at Innofounder

2 months ago

Creativity - meet strategy.

I practice solving problems at scale for people and businesses through design-led innovation. And uncovering them so teams can take action is what I do best.

I specialize in understanding the needs of users within complex systems and addressing them with targeted solutions that are implementable end-to-end.

Work Experience

2024 — Now
Copenhagen

Responsible for building new programming and partnerships for the next generation of Danish startup superstars. I work with founding teams to rapidly de-risk their businesses.

2023 — Now
Venture & Service Design Lead at The Value Proposition Company
Copenhagen

Combining advanced market and user research techniques, I develop and validate new value propositions, and employ rapid prototyping to build them into impactful digital businesses using low to no-code tools to reach market quickly.

  • Creative Strategy: Responsible for driving ux and design processes that are both highly creative and structured to deliver quality consistently.

  • Advanced Co-Creative Toolbox: Years of exposure to creative processes helps me increase buy-in and ownership of workshop and sprint outcomes and gets participants engaged across seniority levels.

  • Rapid Concept Validation: Developed a method to systematically validate new value propositions thoroughly within 2 weeks. Resulted in the first consumer facing business, Toura, which began generating revenue only a day after launch.

2022 — 2023
Copenhagen

Conceptualized, designed, and developed new scalable digital ventures for the in-house venture studio of Essity by identifying and responding to previously unmet or underserved needs.

Initiatives and key results:

  • Data-Driven Design: Collecting, synthesizing and leveraging big data sets to pinpoint unmet needs at scale from internal and external sources – validating trends through individual interviews.

  • Rapid, Iterative Proposition Testing: Drafting and re-drafting value propositions to test with consumers or B2B partners via digital A|B testing, surveys, and one-on-one sessions.

  • Leading Concept to Launch: Led the development of two promising value propositions from concept testing through to in-market prototype testing and launch creating promising new digital growth vehicles for Essity.

2018 — 2021
Berlin

Designed and implemented a first of it’s kind design thinking idea incubation program for one Europes premier life science research institutions, helping startup founders in the space translate their ideas into marketable products and services.

Initiatives and key results:

  • Prototype to Understand: Developed engaging human-centred design programming, enabling non-designers to communicate their ideas visually and develop iterative prototyping capabilities.

  • Design Mentorship: Mentored startup founders in the use of immersive, empathy-driven user research protocols to validate the needs of their prospective users.

  • Cross-Functional Implementation: The BIH has now implemented this design-driven approach across their funding lines to accelerate their success and increase time-to-market.

2019 — 2021
Berlin

Enabled global client firms to experience and integrate design as a strategic process through strategic co-creation and innovation facilitation. Clients included Weber Grills, Ottobock, BBBank, and John Deere.

Initiatives and key results:

  • Brand, Identity, Storytelling: Combined active listening and information architecture approaches to help partners develop, understand, and build their brands.

  • Journey Mapping: Used immersion, observation, and other user research methods to help partners visualize and understand their user journeys and identify novel opportunity areas.

  • Futures Thinking: Workshopping and positive provocation to assist clients in actively engaging with the near and far futures of their customers.

2018 — 2018
Berlin

Leveraged my background in business and interest in strategy and futures to help client firms understand the needs of their customers, implement design-driven processes to meet those needs, and identify opportunities to grow.

Initiatives and key results:

  • Human centred design processes: Quantitative and qualitative user research (structured and semi-structured interviews, survey creation etc.), collection into analysis tools (Dovetail, Airtable etc.)

  • Trend analysis: Market research and competitive analysis to spot areas of opportunity and over-saturation

  • Collaboration for Success: Workshop, sprint, and co-creation design and facilitation for partners to engage with the design process and build actionable roadmapsInsights to actions: Insight generation, report development, and client-facing presentations leading to data-driven decision making

2016 — 2017
Berlin

Responsible for bridging the gap between our customers and the product team to ensure that the touchpoints across the customers’ journey were engaging, efficient and effective.

Initiatives and key results:

  • Leveraging User Feedback: Created and formalized a user feedbacking database to centralize our feedback process

  • UX Performance Optimization: Tracked changes across the product and their impact on key UX metrics, creating a real-time understanding of UX and product health

  • Insight Synthesis: Synthesized user stories and feedback into actionable insights for the development team

  • UX Strategy Development: My work helped the company be more proactive and data-driven when considering long term UX and product strategy

Projects

2023
A Digital Companion for Finding Nearby Bathrooms at Essity Ventures

user & market research, concept development, service & venture design, rapid prototyping, ux/ui design

2023
Designing The Worlds First Recycling Scheme for Single-Use Menstrual Products at Essity Ventures

user & market research, concept development, service & venture design, rapid prototyping, ux/ui design

2022
New Engagement Opportunities for the Fastest Growing Music Lesson Platform in the Nordics
2018
Beyond Mobility Tracking: A Platform Integration Rewarding ‘Green’ Behaviour
2018
Reducing Maintenance Costs for Urban Passenger Rail in Berlin: A Proof-of-Concept

Volunteering

2019 — Now
Lausanne

A global FemTech community and a 9-month equity free FemTech start-up acceleration program for companies developing innovative solutions to improve technologies relating to women’s health.

Education

2021 — 2023
Copenhagen

Focal Areas:

• Service Design
• Collaborative Innovation
• Systems Thinking

2014 — 2017
Berlin

Focal Areas:

• Digital Strategy
• Innovation & Management
• Economics & Finance

Writing

2020
On Capturing and Structuring User Feedback
2020
On Concepts and Why They Matter
2019
Inventors for Health: The First Iteration

Contact

Certifications

2018

During the basic and advanced track programs at the HPI multidisciplinary teams work in a flexible environment and apply an iterative process to develop human-centered products, services or business models.

Teams

Current
Toura