At a time of year when we all get reflective I wanted to take a minute to look back on change at Sparck, and what’s ahead for us in 2025.
First, let me introduce myself. I’m Max Earp and my background is in product innovation and design.
I’ve been with Sparck since 2018 and became Head of Sparck early in 2024, taking over from Rasmus Koefoed-Jespersen when he decided to move on.
I learned a huge amount working alongside Ras for several years and we’re all incredibly grateful to him for his work in building Sparck – and gathering together such a strong team.
Change at Sparck in 2024
The main theme of 2024 was refocusing to play to our strengths.
We've always been proud to be part of BJSS but this year we've really leaned into that, and dug into the benefits it can bring to our clients.
When Sparck’s design and innovation expertise meets the technology capability of BJSS, that’s an amazing end-to-end service. We’re able to solve whole problems from ideation to delivery.
This will be a big theme for 2025 as well. The evidence shows that if you want to serve your customers and users better, a unified approach across research, design, product, tech and data is needed to meet the opportunities that are arising.
Our focus on healthcare
We do a lot of work with the NHS and healthcare was a real focus for us in 2024.
I want to give a shout out to teams working on the NHS website (NHS.UK), the NHS App, and in various other places across the UK healthcare system. Sparckies are doing great and truly worthwhile work in that space.
In 2025, I’m looking forward to developing new relationships across healthcare and thinking of new ways to support the work we’re already delivering.
For example, our responsible innovation framework that Thad Parsons is leading on is pretty exciting – watch this space to find out more. Or give me a shout for a preview. We’d love to test it with some real clients and see what they think.
You can get a sense of the breadth of our work in healthcare, and the depth of our thinking, from recent posts on the Sparck blog:
Futures thinking and customer experience
2024 was also the year that our futures thinking capability really began to bear fruit.
Under Matt Mullan's leadership, it got us excited; the BJSS leadership team excited; and also fired up many of our clients who, finally, found a way to tackle uncertainty head on.
In 2025, we want to continue to build on that, but also increase our focus on customer experience (CX).
In Kerrie Hughes, we have an amazing champion for CX thinking.
You can see her deliver an amazing talk on the subject at Agile on the Beach on YouTube or read her blog post based on it here on the Sparck blog.
She’s helping us build a serious CX capability that can help companies like yours engage customers, create brand loyalty, and turn them into vocal advocates for your products and services.
Just as I was writing this, I saw this post from Olivia Brown pop up on LinkedIn which I think says it all:
Our sector focus in 2025
I'm also keen to do more work in the retail, financial and energy sectors in 2025.
The work we already do with clients in those areas provides us with exactly the kind of complex problems our strategists, researchers and designers love to solve.
For example, how do you prevent customer churn and earn customer loyalty? How do you get new products and services off the wish list and out to market, fast? And how do we deploy technology in ways that truly benefit customers?
Working with BJSS to do more with AI
The conversation about AI is evolving and maturing. It’s being used at Sparck/BJSS in all sorts of smart, impactful ways, and we want to continue finding ways to help us deliver more, faster.
We also want to work closely with the AI experts at BJSS to deliver on the promise of AI for clients. How can it be made to work meaningfully for you and for your customers?
Let’s connect
Like a lot of people, New Year is when I resolve to be better at networking and make more connections. With that in mind, please do connect with me on LinkedIn so we can get to know each other.
Or, if you’ve got a problem you think Sparck can help to solve, email me directly via the contact form on this website.
