EDB X Dole Corporate Venture
During my time at the Economic Development Board as a product designer, I was deployed to the New Ventures team where I supported strategic corporate ventures with an 8-week fundraising sprint.
As the product designer working alongside other business executives, I led the full customer discovery process from research, synthesis, ideation, concept creation, to creative design works such as branding and prototyping of beta website.
The corporation is Dole Sunshine Company - You might heard of their bananas. For their new corporate venture, they wanted to focus on sourcing and transforming their fruit sidestreams and unutilized fruit parts by repurposing them into high-value natural ingredients such as enzymes, extracts, seed oils and fibres.
The Challenge
WThe corporation is Dole Sunshine Company - You might heard of their bananas. For their new corporate venture, they wanted to focus on sourcing and transforming their fruit sidestreams and unutilized fruit parts by repurposing them into high-value natural ingredients such as enzymes, extracts, seed oils and fibres.
This is the company’s first foray into the chemicals industry and is unsure of the product-market fit.
The Output
An 8 week sprint to understand the industry ecosystem, potential buyers and competitors. We also finalized a solid Go-To-Market business plan at the end of the sprint, and presented it back to investors.
Press Releases
The business team and My role
- Led the full customer discovery process: research, synthesis, ideation, concept creation, branding and prototyping of beta website
- From Dole: Operations, Finance, Supply Chain, Manufacturing
- From EDB: Business Designers, Venture Capitalists
- Scientists from Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)
About this company
Economic Development Board
Product Design Lead
Jan 2018 - May 2022
The Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) is the lead government agency responsible for strengthening Singapore as a global hub for business, innovation, and talent.
I was the founding product designer for a new product division focused on rolling out internal sales CRM solutions and external and grant-management systems.
As part of this new product team, I was sent for an apprenticeship at Pivotal Labs (now VMware) to learn modern product development practices and apply them within the organisation.
I later joined the venture-building team as a strategic designer, working closely with investment teams to support portfolio companies on product-market fit and scaling efforts.
About Dole Sunshine Company
Dole Specialty Ingredients (DSI) emerged in 2021 as B2B arm of Dole as to develop ingredient business and to transform plant/fruit side streams into high-value specialty ingredients with an aim to divert feedstock left behind in the fruit industry and utilize them in making high value-added ingredients.