Intunio on Innovation and Cultivating Workplace Culture during the Pandemic

Johan Frej, CTO at Intunio tells us how they define, design and develop intuitive user experiences.

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

Johan Frej: Thank you for asking! Luckily my family and I are doing very well, but just like everybody else, we really look forward to the day we can meet our relatives and friends like normal again.

Tell us about your professional background and when Intunio was founded.

Johan Frej: My background, like all of the Intunio founders, stems from TAT (The Astonishing Tribe). TAT was all about innovative design in UI and UX and was acquired by BlackBerry in December of 2010. BlackBerry acquired both the technology and talent in TAT.

During my time at TAT, I worked with the design and development of our render engine and UI framework, which was integrated into over 500 million mobile phones, cars, and other products. During my time at BlackBerry, I was one of the architects behind the UI framework for the BlackBerry 10 platform.

We founded Intunio in the summer of 2015, right after BlackBerry closed down the offices in Sweden. It was a no brainer to continue working with the people that I knew so well and had so much fun with. 

What does Intunio do, and how do you work with innovation?

Johan Frej: At Intunio, we help our customers create great user experiences. We design and develop apps, web solutions, and other digital products. In our opinion, we combine the best of two worlds: consulting and product development. We conduct the majority of our assignments from our office in the city center of Gothenburg. 

Our main focus when it comes to innovation is to assist our customers in finding new and creative ways to solve their problems. We are often involved early in procurement and customer projects to find solutions and come up with innovative ways to address our customers’ needs. Innovation in this phase can involve anything from smart technology choices to designing entirely new services.

At Intunio, we have our own innovation process with the long-term strategy to build products and turn those into their own companies. Joining other product companies as co-owners and contributing with our skills and innovation capacity is also something we do. The application Matlistan is one such example. 

How has the pandemic affected your business, and how are you coping?

Johan Frej: Over the years, we have created a warm and open-hearted office culture that we value greatly. Like most companies, we have had to adjust to working from home now, making it more important than ever to actively maintain and cultivate this company culture in new ways. 

Since the way we work and collaborate is inherently easy to do remotely, we have continued with all our customer projects throughout the pandemic. We have even seen an increased need for our services. In fact, it has been an exciting business year, and we have grown with seven employees, from 16 to 23 people, and we are looking to hire during the spring as well.

Lastly, how do you plan to stay in the game?

Johan Frej: I think we should keep doing what we are doing in a sense. Our old customers keep coming back wanting to work with us again, and at the same time, new customers find us through recommendations and common connections. 

As an employer, we will continue to value and cultivate our internal company culture to ensure that we will stay in a warm and humble workplace when growing bigger.

Where can we find out more about Intunio? 

https://intunio.se/