Q&A with David Morrison,

This Wednesday’s SheWorx breakfast will be hosted by David Morrison. David Morrison is the founder of Awesome Co. Previously he headed product at Aloha and Birchbox and has over 14 years of experience in digital media and e-commerce. He will be discussing how to effectively apply resources and manage product development.

Why are you doing what you are doing today?

I love working with groups of people who are seeking solutions to help others succeed. Product management is something that happens in the background, in the margins, as you work diligently to help others — the team, its members, and their customers — be successful. I love that.

If you had no constraints, what problem would you like to start tackling tomorrow and why?

Vertical Indoor Farming. Food is undergoing a vast and rapid change as the world reacts to an expanding population, declining environment, increasing awareness of health and wellness, and accelerating socioeconomic divides. I’d love to explore vertical indoor farming as an opportunity to bring fresh produce to underserved populations, those commonly referred to as food deserts, within the US and throughout the world.

Tell us about a story when someone won you over. How did they do it?

I’m a big believer in the notion of strong opinions, weakly held. Bringing this mindset, along with a willingness to listen and engage in conversation allows you to honestly explore and understand alternate points of view. The fastest way to win me over is clarity of thought and clear data that supports a point of view. Recently at ALOHA I proposed a method of using tags to support our content management needs to our engineering team. I was bullish on the approach having used it multiple times with success but was won over by an alternate approach proposed articulately by an engineer who supported his perspective with a prototype.