Mormedi’s Jaime Moreno: “Be Brave; let’s Make Decisions with Optimism, Not Fear”

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID-19 times? 

Jaime Moreno: We are doing well within the circumstances, waiting and hoping that this crisis and uncertainty ends soon. 

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded Mormedi. 

Jaime Moreno: I started studying Architecture at the Madrid Polytechnic and then moved to Switzerland, where I got a Degree in Transportation Design at the Art Center College of Design. My first job was at Philips DAP as an external consultant, and that is when the adventure started. As an external consultant, I had to set up a company, and we started hiring designers. Suddenly we had a team, projects, a client portfolio inside and outside of Spain. Nowadays, Mormedi is a global boutique design strategy & product innovation consultancy. We work from strategy to implementation with clients worldwide and from different industries.

Our headquarters are in Madrid, but the majority of our business is from outside of Spain. So we work with clients on their design and innovation activities all over the world, in the USA, Latin America, Europe, Japan, and Korea.

How does Mormedi  innovate? 

Jaime Moreno: Our core is innovation. We not only innovate within the company, but we help other companies to innovate. 

Our innovation capacity is related to our ability to adapt and transform. We started as an industrial product innovation consultancy, and we had to evolve our services by looking at the entire user experience creating a service design team, a digital team, and a business consulting team, as the complexity of the projects that were coming in increased. Therefore, we had to incorporate new capabilities. Since we work with trends, this helps us imagine what the world will be like in the next 20 years and prepare in advance. 

How the coronavirus pandemic affects your business, and how are you coping?

Jaime Moreno: We were lucky to have a diversified client portfolio, not only in terms of industry but geography as well. This helped us quite a lot since Spain is the European country with the most affected economy due to the pandemic. Nevertheless, even though we work in a field that is needed more now than ever, which is innovation, the scenario is slowing down worldwide, and of course, it impacts us.

Did you have to make difficult choices, and what are the lessons learned?

Jaime Moreno: Due to the economic circumstances, like everyone else, we had to reduce costs. In April, we decided not to keep hiring people as we did not know how long the crisis would last. The lesson is a positive one. If you make the decisions based on optimism and not based on fear, the outcomes are also optimistic. We tend to freeze, but the reality is that we have to keep moving forward! 

How do you deal with stress and anxiety?

Jaime Moreno: Doing sports help me take the stress and anxiety off. I like squash and tennis. Now we are about to start the ski season in Spain. That will help me, as well. But I think like an entrepreneur, you have to be able to live with uncertainty. 

Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?

Jaime Moreno: As we work in different areas and give a service that goes from strategy to implementation, our competitors are innovation/design consultancies and strategy consultancies that offer some of our services. Some competitors just work on industrial design, some on service design, some on digital design, and some on business model innovation, but we do not have that many competitors that offer all of our services together. 

What helps us most to stay in the game is undoubtedly the brilliant team that gets us out of our comfort zone as each one of us expresses his or her own opinion to develop outstanding ideas.

Your final thoughts?

Jaime Moreno: The companies that can see the opportunities in a crisis are the ones that will define the world over the coming years. Now is the time to innovate and create. 

Your website?

https://www.mormedi.com/es/