Designed for Life - In conversation with Richard Joseph

Twin brothers Richard and Antony Joseph are founders and owners of one of the world's most iconic and innovative kitchenware brands. In this podcast, we are fortunate to be in conversation with Richard Joseph, who takes us through his journey from school, where design and technology played a key role in setting his future direction as a designer, through the early days of Joseph Joseph selling glass chopping boards made from a raw material donation from their father's factory. Through to today and running a successful and innovative design business with over two-hundred mission-driven staff across continents. This conversation provides an amazing insight into the development and carefully planned growth of a design business, a business where 'form follows function' is something of a mantra, and why Joseph Joseph endeavour to take often complex designs just that little bit further in development than their competitors in order to fulfil this design promise to their customers.   It also provides insight into how a successful business can be managed and led by twin brothers by splitting tasks and responsibilities but keeping design at the epicentre of every decision taken. Finally, we get an insight into the future of Joseph Joseph as Richard describes his passion for the company's products to use research and mission prioritisation to help solve some of the sustainability issues created by a capitalist and sales-led society. This was a great conversation to start 2023, I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation, and I know you will too.  This podcast has been recorded with the help of our sponsors, The Edge Foundation https://www.edge.co.uk/ inspiring the education system to give all young people across the UK the knowledge, skills and behaviours they need to flourish in their future life and work and PTC Onshape Providing industry-standard cloud-based CAD to education  https://www.ptc.com/en/news/2020/ptc-onshape-education-enterprise-plan-available-free-of-charge. We are indebted to The Edge and PTC Onshape for their continued support.References within this podcast:https://www.josephjoseph.com/