Up-and-Coming 'Innovation Agency' AJ&Smart Launch Design Sprint Masterclass With Sprint Creator Jake Knapp

BERLIN, August 21, 2018 (Newswire.com) -  From Silicon Valley giants to start-ups and billionaires alike, the Design Sprint is now relied upon to solve problems, launch new products and make companies better, and now the process can be learned online in just one weekend, as Jake Knapp and AJ&Smart proudly launch a new online course.

Today, Berlin-based AJ&Smart and bestselling author Jake Knapp officially announce their collaboration on the most comprehensive online course about the Design Sprint, promising to take participants from novice to Sprint-ready in just one weekend.

It's been amazing to see the adoption of the Design Sprint. The book has only been out since 2016, but already it's spreading from startups to larger companies and even government agencies and non-profits. I get the feeling this is just the beginning, and I'm excited to see what will happen as even more people learn the process and start implementing it in their work. It's just such a powerful way to focus attention on what really matters at work.

Jake Knapp, Author of 'Sprint'

The Design Sprint is a process for solving big (mostly product-related) problems significantly faster, in teams. The process was created by Jake Knapp in 2010 while working at Google where, alongside his team, he spent around five years improving and refining it while working on products like Chrome and Search, and later he’d bring the process to Google Ventures. Jake then went on to write "Sprint," which would become a New York Times bestseller and inspire thousands of teams around the world to start adopting the process.

In short, the process condenses months, or even years, of work down to just five days. After the release of Sprint, the team at AJ&Smart became a first adopter of the process and shifted from traditional agency work to a sole focus on the Design Sprint. They’ve trained everyone from the likes of Google and LEGO to some of the world’s largest banking groups since then.

Knapp first teamed up to run Design Sprint trainings with AJ&Smart in 2017. “I’d read about their work and was excited by the way they thought about process and improved their version of the Design Sprint and make it easier to run and more effective for big companies. Once we started working together, I was super impressed. They’re energetic, fun and also excellent teachers.”

That brings us to the Masterclass. “People have been asking for a video course for a long time, but I’d been reluctant to do it … it’s a lot of work to create such a thing, and hard to get it right. But once Jonathan showed me what he and his team were working on, I thought ‘this is it!’ The AJ&Smart course was entertaining and educational and I wanted to get involved.”

“It’s been amazing to see the adoption of the Design Sprint. The book has only been out since 2016, but already it's spreading from startups to larger companies and even government agencies and non-profits. I get the feeling this is just the beginning, and I’m excited to see what will happen as even more people learn the process and start implementing it in their work. It's just such a powerful way to focus attention on what really matters at work,” continues Knapp.

On the collaboration, AJ&Smart’s CEO Jonathan Courtney exclaims, “We love working with Jake and our community couldn't be happier to see us bring something like this to them. We generally put all our secrets out there for free If you go on our YouTube channel, you’ll see that there are hundreds of hours of material on there, where we basically share how we do things at AJ&Smart. The course was created because we had a lot of people asking us to provide an immersive step-by-step guide to the whole Sprint process, so we basically stopped nearly everything we were doing at the company and made exactly that for people.”

AJ&Smart & Jake Knapp’s Design Sprint Masterclass is available now and includes over 55 lessons and all the resources the AJ&Smart team use when running a Design Sprint with a client, including slide decks and result delivery templates.

Editor’s notes:

- For comments, and/or interview requests, please contact Laura Faint: [email protected] or +49 160 946 97108.

- Our Press Kit (including images) is here. For other images, please contact [email protected].

- More information about AJ&Smart’s newly launched Design Sprint Masterclass can be found here. The course costs €1,497 and includes everything needed to facilitate a Design Sprint.

- AJ&Smart’s YouTube channel can be found here; Jonathan Courtney and Jake Knapp host a podcast together called The Product Breakfast Club which can be found here.

- AJ&Smart was founded in 2011 by Jonathan Courtney and Michael Smart.

Source: AJ&Smart