TVC068 Play Bigger Influencer and Innovator, Silicon Valley’s Al Ramadan
Welcome back to the Influencer Fitpreneur Series. 
I’m honoured to have a special guest on the show,  Play Bigger co-author and true innovator, Al Ramadan.  
Co-founding partner at Play Bigger Advisors, Al has been a CEO, Entrepreneur, Operating Executive and Sailing Technologist.
He is also a mentor, father and favourite uncle to an ever-growing circle of next-generation superstars.
I met Al when we were both on a fabulous island in the Pacific, Namotu, and he was just about to launch his new book – Play Bigger; how Pirates, Dreamers and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets.
A true definition of a Fitpreneur,  I hope you enjoy listening to this episode, as much as we did recording it.
Al in San Fran and me sitting on the opposite side of the globe in Australia. At the time of this podcast recoding, Play Bigger was announced as one of the top 5 in leadership and strategy books in the US for business.
It’s been a hell of a journey. Al Ramadan
An Influencer From The Start
In the early ’90s Al applied data science to Australia’s Americas Cup by showing data along with video – an innovation in sports performance analytics. As a result of this work, Al co-founded Quokka Sports, which pioneered data-intensive sports immersion on the Internet and revolutionised the way people experienced sport.
He then joined Macromedia – and Adobe,  after Adobe acquired Macromedia, where he spent almost ten years changing the way people think about great digital experiences on the Web and on then-new mobile devices.
At Adobe, Al led teams that created the Rich Internet Applications category and helped develop the discipline of experience design.
Collaboration and Consciousness
In 2011 Al started up his current big project, the company Play Bigger Advisers, with his 2  ‘brothers in life’,  Dave Patterson and Chris Lochhead. This new project meant the reach of knowledge and shared experience was going to go broader and make a bigger impact than ever before.

 “At Play Bigger, we help those that are already successful in venture capital, already established, take their businesses to the next level, to the ultimate transcendence”

Al states that working in co-category design is a unique discipline. It’s a new thing, just like product design, company design, industrial design, experience design, all of these design methodologies have appeared over the course of the last 20 or 30 years. 
The wonderful thing about silicon valley and everything else is creating something before the market even knows where to put it, and that’s often the challenge of innovative minds, is that they have an idea that doesn’t fit in a box yet.  
People,  when purchasing, like to think in categories, so you may not realise it but category design is one of the leading product development areas in our day to day world.
From cereals to diary products, washing products to bikes and cars.  For example an SUV is a category. 
 
Writing Play Bigger The Book

Due to their innovation and experience in Category Design,  Play Bigger advisors were repeatedly asked by people to do projects and they just couldn’t accept them – “we were too busy“. So this sparked the idea for Play Bigger the book.
“We all thought collectively, the right thing to do is to try and get this discipline arti...