When expertise and purpose collide, great things happen

Like a lot of people, I’ve tried my best to chart a course in my career that speaks to my own interests and ideals. Of course, I’ve also had ambitions of the more mundane variety too – a salary that supports the life I want to provide for my family, opportunities to develop my skills, and a chance to progress my career to be part of how decisions are made.

But purpose has always been at the core of my career choices. That’s why I spent a number of years at Insights: its purpose of wanting to create a world where everyone understands themselves, understand others, and make a positive difference in the world, is one that I found impossible to resist. Who wouldn’t want to be part of positive corporate and societal change?

Synchronicity of purpose

Now, although I’m still part of the Insights Group, my days at Insights Learning and Development are over and I’ve moved on - with purpose - to become CEO of Dogfish Mobile. What’s made the transition easier than I thought is the true synchronicity in the purpose of both organisations.

What struck me most when I first encountered Dogfish is not their bend towards innovation and design or their rock-solid technical expertise - although if you’re looking for a mobile development partner you frankly couldn’t do any better - but the desire that sits at their very core to design mobile apps that change the world, bit by bit, through habit forming technologies.

Using our smartphone addiction for good

The projects that are closest to our heart at Dogfish Mobile are those that are centred around a ‘hook’. Giving users a reason to come back to the app, time after time after time, is habit-forming in itself. Given that we touch our phones, on average, over 2000 times a day, you could say it’s the strongest, most unbreakable habit that most of us will ever have.  

So imagine taking that level of user interaction, and putting it to good use. Dogfish Mobile are doing that every day through a range of apps. With one of our areas of expertise being Health and Wellbeing, we created the Sugar Smart app, which quickly and easily allows you (particularly children) to improve your diet by tracking how much sugar is in your everyday diet. Or the NHS Now app, which puts health information and access directly into the hands of patients by helping them find the nearest, most appropriate local health service that’s open, at any time, day or night. There are so many others, QuitCoach that supports stop smoking, Days Off that supports a reduction in alcohol consumption and Couch to 5K which promotes good exercise habits.

We are proud to be delivering solutions for Health and Wellbeing, Social Good and a Better Working World and whether it’s creating a risk assessment app to improve safety records for Network Rail, or building an app that helps users stop smoking, at Dogfish Mobile we hold true to the purpose of promoting mobile-enabled behaviour change. By instilling affirmative change in the lives of users, we’re busy making a positive difference in the world.

That’s why I’m so glad that my career has brought me to Dogfish Mobile.