Growth Hub is as much about the people as the process.
For Concept Development Manager, Daniel Jilderos, being involved in the development of TA-Smart was about more than creating a new product.
Having worked in concept development for many years, Daniel was used to thinking about technical requirements, performance, and how to deliver against a defined specification. Growth Hub, where innovation begins with the customer challenge, encouraged him to step back from the solution. Spending more time understanding the problem and involving customers throughout the process.
“Growth Hub definitely changed how I view innovation,” Daniel says. “Earlier in my career, innovation often meant meeting technical requirements and optimising performance.”
Starting with the customer
Innovation doesn't always start with a solution.
“With Growth Hub, everything shifted. Instead of starting with the solution, we started by understanding the customer’s problem.”
For Daniel, this was one of the biggest changes in how he approached innovation. Rather than assuming the team already knew what the right answer looked like, he learned to use customer conversations and early prototypes to test those assumptions.
“Customers rarely care about the exact technical solution; they care about how easily a product solves their problem and fits into their daily work.”
That became particularly important during the development of TA-Smart. Customers were involved early and throughout the process, giving Daniel and the wider team a much clearer view of what mattered in practice.
“It taught me to focus innovation efforts on what creates the most value for the customer rather than what is most interesting from an engineering perspective.”
Learning by doing
One of the most memorable moments in the project came not in a laboratory, but in the office of our facility in Ljung, Sweden.
An early prototype was installed in the building’s heating system so the team could evaluate it in a real-world environment and involve customers in the process.
Then came a weekend power outage.
When power was restored, the valve shut down the entire heating loop, leaving the team to return to a very cold office on Monday morning.
While not the outcome anyone wanted, the experience gave Daniel something a controlled laboratory test could not: a genuine insight into how the product behaved in the real world.
“It revealed an important design flaw that we would likely never have discovered in a traditional laboratory test setup.”
The experience reinforced the value of being willing to test ideas before they are perfect, and to see unexpected results as an opportunity to learn rather than a failure.
That lesson has influenced how Daniel approaches projects today.
“In later projects, we have actively worked with customer groups and brought prototypes to customers much earlier than before.”
He has also taken more agile ways of working into subsequent projects, using shorter development cycles, regular feedback sessions and closer cross-functional collaboration.
One of the principles he now shares with others is simple:
“Even a simple ‘ugly prototype’ can generate more valuable feedback than a detailed presentation, because people naturally react to something they can see and interact with.”
For Daniel, that is one of the most valuable lessons from the experience: sometimes the fastest way to improve an idea is to put it in front of someone and see what happens.
From experience to impact
As customer challenges evolve, Daniel believes this way of working is becoming increasingly important.
“In some industries, such as data centres, a three-year development timeline may be too slow,” he says.
Growth Hub gives teams a way to stay closer to customers, identify emerging challenges earlier and adapt their direction as they learn more. But for Daniel, the experience has also changed the way he approaches his own role.
It has made him more comfortable challenging assumptions, testing ideas earlier and bringing different perspectives into the development process.
It has also reinforced the importance of the early concept phase, an area Daniel has worked in for many years.
“The most rewarding part is the strong focus on the early concept phase. I have worked with concept development for many years and have seen how critical those first decisions are.”
For Daniel, Growth Hub has changed the conversation from asking ‘what should we build?’ to asking ‘what problem are we really trying to solve?’.
“When you truly understand the problem, you have a much greater chance of creating a successful product.”
Daniel didn't just develop a product through Growth Hub. He evolved his own approach to innovation, becoming more willing to experiment, learn from customers and challenge his assumptions along the way.
“If we want to lead rather than follow, we need the courage to experiment and learn quickly.”
His experience shows how opportunities to experiment, collaborate and take ownership can help people develop their skills, challenge their thinking and create meaningful impact for customers.
And ultimately, that is what makes Growth Hub more than a process. It gives people the space to learn through experience, and the confidence to take what they have learned into whatever comes next.
