All great ideas start with innovation instinct.

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After a career in financial services tech where I have built some really exciting products and companies, I’ve joined MISSION+ as the team’s CTO.  

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The idea driving this shift is simple - we can build a better technology-backed future if we empower the visionaries today with the freedom to build. 

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After working in a corporate environment building trading technology for more than a decade, I decided that it wasn’t for me. The startup bug had bitten me, and I wanted to go out on my own. This was one of the riskiest decisions I have ever made, but ultimately it has paid off. My journey since then has been full of ups and downs, but I have learnt and enjoyed so much along the way.

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The Journey to Innovate With Clarity

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We can do so much more to maximise our chance of winning - or failing quickly. After working with both startups that have enjoyed varying levels of success and AWS, I have solidified my thoughts on what factors predict positive outcomes and developed practical frameworks, which most innovators could benefit from. This mixture of corporate and startup experience has shaped my thinking and drives my continued efforts to take these ideas significantly further. 

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As Joni Mitchell sang, “I’ve looked at life from both sides now”. 

MISSION+ met me at the intersection of these career crossroads, which leads me to my vision for tomorrow.

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The MISSION+ Potential

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MISSION+ was initially set up to address an obvious need: companies need technologists.  

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There are excellent developers around the region. So we can bring together this supply and demand to create products that customers and businesses love. Over time, MISSION+ grew by adding UI/UX capability, and so becoming even more product centric.

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I’m On A Mission

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The patterns which drive product success can be defined with clarity. We can help others.

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A few principles can be found at the heart of high performing teams and innovative processes:

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• Product comes first. Teams with good product instinct can compensate for many other factors. Even with the best technology, a team with mediocre product understanding will fail.
• Simplify. We are at risk of overcomplicating what we are building, especially when surrounded by consultants selling complexity. Simplify until you’re uncomfortable, then simplify a little further.
• Iterate. While we start from simplicity, we take feedback and iteratively add. Essential complexity is born from iterative simplicity.
• Decentralised decision making, concentrated decision authority. Centralised decision making introduces delay to the rest of the system. You cannot move quickly when components in the system are locked, waiting for signals. Distributing decision authority leads to multiple decision makers needing to be consulted on every little item, slowing things down. Specific decisions should be owned by a single person.

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I will expand upon the above ideas in future deep-dives, but these are the central guiding ideas on which I, and MISSION+, operate.

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It never ceases to amaze me how quickly technology iterates, and how much more productive we can be if we take advantage of this progress. Whether it is building websites with Webflow, removing infrastructure through a serverless approach, processing & analysing data in ways that ten years ago was simply impossible, or one of the many other modern stack approaches - there is so much opportunity. MISSION+ allows me to integrate these approaches with client vision.

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As humans get better at remote work, we unlock new ways of working. Tools will get better, and AI like ChatGPT is changing the way we think about how software is built. MISSION+ pledges to integrate the best processes and tools to our work to facilitate this new future.  

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We will:

• Improve the way products are imagined.
• Improve the way people design & build technology.
• Improve the way that partners interact with their clients.

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If you would like to discuss more about the challenges you are having, please reach out to me directly at ned.lowe@mission.plus or anyone from the team!  

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We’re always here to share ideas, the tech, and the building experience; you provide the mission.

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