Event description
This practical, interactive workshop helps small businesses move beyond assumptions and truly understand who their customers are and what they value. Using simple Design Thinking tools, Jo guides participants through customer interviewing techniques, defining customer needs, and creating usable information.
The session is hands on, energetic, and designed for people with no research background. By the end, attendees will have clearer insight into how they can define their real customer groups, the problems they face, and how to use those insights to shape better products, services, and marketing decisions.
What will I Learn?
- How to identify your real customer groups (not just who you think they are)
- Have simple, structured conversations that reveal what customers really need
- Understand what customers are trying to get done, and what frustrates or motivates them
- Turn what you learn into clear, focused problem statements
- How to use customer understanding to define products, services, and messaging
Who should attend?
Start ups, small businesses, early stage founders, service providers, and anyone wanting to better understand their customers.
The Growth Hub is committed to providing universal access to all of our events. Please contact the Tewkesbury Growth Hub team on tewkesbury@thegrowthhub.biz or call 01684 272073 to request disability accommodations. Advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs so we request you contact us at least five working days before the event whenever possible.
How to Book
If you're having difficulty signing up, it's likely that the details you are trying to register with were initially entered prior to the launch of our new website in April 2024. You will therefore need to re-register for a new account, before booking a place to attend an event. If you are still having problems, please get in touch with a member of the Growth Hub team who will be happy to help: talktous@thegrowthhub.biz
About the speakers
Jo Wilkinson
Jo is a Product and R&D Transformation Leader with more than 25 years’ experience shaping high tech solutions, modernising global engineering organisations, and enabling teams to deliver customer centred products with clarity and confidence. Her career spans hands on scientific development, global product innovation, and senior leadership across complex hardware–software environments. This gives her a rare ability to translate technical depth into practical, accessible learning for others. Jo began her career in laboratory and technical roles, building deep expertise in materials testing, rheology, experimental design, and customer applications. This early grounding in real world problem solving shaped her pragmatic, evidence based approach to product development. Over the following decade, she became a trusted specialist in product testing, customer insight, and requirements definition, supporting major product launches and representing her organisation at international scientific conferences. As she progressed into leadership roles, Jo became a catalyst for transformation. She introduced Design Thinking across international R&D teams, trained more than 150 engineers and scientists in data driven development, and embedded modern product methodologies that improved quality, delivery performance, and customer alignment. Her work in developing global operating models, career frameworks, and cross functional delivery systems has reshaped how teams collaborate and innovate. Most recently, Jo led large, multi disciplinary engineering groups through organisational change, capability building, and strategic alignment - consistently improving productivity, clarity, and customer focused decision making. As an Event Delivery Partner, she draws on this rich blend of technical expertise, facilitation skill, and transformation leadership to help businesses gain clarity, understand their customers, and make meaningful progress with confidence.
