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How to Survive an Acquisition

  • Chris Govias
  • ,
  • Chief Design Officer
  • ,
  • Versett
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About the Speaker

“Chris Govias is a designer who’s worked with startups, charities, Fortune 500 companies, and two federal governments. As the Head of Design for the Ministry of Justice (UK), he was on the forefront of delivering transformative, user-centred government services. That work led to him becoming a founding member and the Chief of Design with the Government of Canada’s Canadian Digital Service. Today, as Chief Design Officer for Versett, he continues to work at the intersection of people, design, technology, and service delivery.

Chris’s work on Spacelog.org, which converted scans of NASA transcripts from early space missions into a searchable, accessible, linkable website, won praise from The Huffington Post, The Atlantic, Popular Science, BoingBoing and NPR, to name a few. His work has also appeared in Applied Arts, the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt Design Magazine, and Communication Arts.

Chris holds a Bachelor of Design from the University of Alberta. Originally from the snow-swept Canadian prairies, he lives in Ottawa with his partner and tiny human where they spend a lot of time riding bikes, cooking and eating delicious things from their extensive library of cookbooks, and drawing lots of raccoons and monkeys.t”

About the Session

If we examine independent design companies over the past design, a trend becomes evident: acquisition. Some of the most interesting companies have been brought into larger technology companies, management consultancies, and accountancies. Examples include Adaptive Path to Capital One, Fjord to Accenture, Seren to EY, TWG to Deloitte, and, most personally, Domain7 to Versett. As someone who’s worked through (survived?) three acquisitions and their integrations, I’ve managed to identify the pitfalls, the dangers and benefits of integration, and developed active steps towards making the process as smooth as possible. I’ll be sharing these tactics and strategies along with insights from other designers I’veI interviewed with my usual cheeky attitude and flair for storytelling.

Design Leadership Summit 2024 Chris Govias, Versett

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