Business In:Brief with Leica Ison (Skyjed)
Leica Ison
CEO and Founder of Skyjed – 2017-present
Leica Ison is the founder and CEO of Skyjed. Skyjed provides AI-generated solutions to test-drive products at any point of their life cycles. These solutions deliver comprehensive health checks across key performance drivers in just hours, rather than weeks. Skyjed also provides real-time comprehensive product-performance data as well as identifying areas for product improvement that can be shared across functions for faster business decisions.
Find out more about Leica's unique experiences in the world of business, the other leaders she admires and her future plans for Skyjed below.
What was your first job?
I started my career in a policy initiative that was very innovative at the time. My first job was in the environmental area with the Federal Government's National Landcare program. It was a first as an alliance between the Farmers' Federation and the Australian Conservation Foundation and produced a national plan for environmental management.
What's your proudest achievement?
Starting with a clean sheet of paper and designing the product construct and roadmap releases for Australia's largest infrastructure project: the National Broadband Network. I joined at 12 people and built out the team and product releases with customers and the regulator. I passionately believed then, and it's proved relevant today in our virtual world, that our future will be digital.
What's something that you have learned in business that took you by surprise?
How businesses of all sizes and industries, and their teams, can move to remote working in a matter of days.
How do you plan on growing your business in the near future?
Product governance is a hot topic right now as boards and their product teams see the importance of managing non-financial risk in their products.
We are scaling for growth as Skyjed can be applied by businesses to quickly and cost-effectively tackle challenges like regulatory design obligations, climate-related impacts and modern slavery regulations in a product life cycle.
Product and compliance executives get a complete package to successfully implement a digital product-governance strategy for any company.
What other business leader do you most admire and why?
I most admire those that are willing to collaborate with others. Herman Miller created a system for designing "cradle to cradle" products that wouldn't have the environmental impact other manufacturers just accepted as a cost of doing business. This system was started in the late 90s when Herman Miller decided he needed to collaborate with architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart to help reduce Herman Miller's environmental impact. This "cradle to cradle" framework laid the foundations for today's circular economy. We need more of these types of collaborations to create viable tech solutions.
What's the best piece of business advice you've ever received?
Deliver bad news in person, and the earlier the better.
What advice would you pass on to someone starting out in your area?
Set aside one day a week to review strategy and monitor technology and disruption trends – and their impact on product business models. It's vital.
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