What makes us more effective?
we're able to connect design, technology, and business...and execute on it.
Dean Kakridas - Founder & Chief Playmaker
Dean Kakridas oversees all clients, programs and collaborative playmakers. He helps startup and big brand clients identify and optimize their business or product opportunities, and develops creative solutions, relationships, and business deals that deliver lucrative business and brand value. He advises clients throughout the process and helps ensure that nineten’s work has an outcome meaningful to clients, playmakers, and end users/ customers.
Dean has 18-years of high-technology experience as an engineer, business developer, product strategist, and creative visionary. Prior to founding nineten innovation, Dean worked at frog design, where he led some of the largest mobile and consumer electronics accounts—Nokia, Motorola, SK Telecom, LG Electronics, T-Mobile, and Best Buy. In addition to the design field, Dean’s experience as a product innovator and business developer spans computer hardware (Sun Microsystems, NEC, Kendall Square Research, MicroTouch) and software/Internet/mobile (Opera Software, Macromedia/ Adobe).
On Business Development: Dean believes that the best form of business development (and the only way nineten works) is by continually creating lucrative business outcomes steeped in creativity, quality, responsibility, and meeting the unmet needs of users & customers through usable, authentic brand experiences.
What's a Playmaker you ask?
We look to sports, and more specifically, the beautiful game of soccer as a metaphor for inventing the Playmaker role. Businesses, from startups to Fortune 50, need an edge, that x-factor -- playmakers -- to help deliver unique value in a variety of ways that lead to winning outcomes for their products and services. In soccer, the players that wear numbers nine and ten on their jerseys are considered the most talented players on the pitch. They are the talismen that lift the spirits and performance of the entire team. They often get the assists and score the goals. These playmakers bring focus, excitement, and drive success.
We believe that startup founders and organizational leaders need the same reliable go-to member of their extended team that continually rises to the occasion, consistently delivers the goods, and is always a pleasure to work with.
Roger Martin, a dean at the University of Toronto and a brilliant thinker about innovation, is famously known for saying that the key strategic question for CEOs or leaders is "Where to play, how to win?" You could also say Playmaking is the new Doing.
A playmaker, by our coinage, is a highly trusted and valued someone in between (but not limited to):
- an adviser and a company builder
- an inventor and executive producer
- a designer and business developer
- a philosopher and fixer
- a friend and soul mate
Besides, who really wants to be a consultant? Has a role ever been more dry, lifeless, and indifferent? We care too much about our clients, their business, and their customers to be limited to such a tired term. And frankly, if we're not thoughtful and innovative about our own business and lives, how can we be for our clients?
Business is about winning. Creativity is a playground. Life's a game. The world is our pitch.
nineten is here to assist or put the ball in the back of the net when and where you need us.