Setting Thrive's 2026 vision

The challenge

Thrive had grown faster than its strategy could keep up with. Acquisitions, a fast-moving market, and a roadmap shaped one client request at a time had left the company without a shared direction. Teams were building the same thing in parallel. External positioning held the “front door to work” line but hadn’t evolved past it. The vision needed sharpening.

The approach

Led a three-month vision programme covering stakeholder research, competitor analysis, future tech evaluation, six cross-functional workshops, engineering feasibility checks, and primary user research with learners, managers, and L&D admins. Synthesised the work into a framework with a why, six product pillars, and six principles, then brought it together as a UX framework that gave the strategy a tangible product shape.

• Set Thrive’s shared product strategy, replacing parallel directions with one
• Built the architecture (pillars + principles) that gave teams a shared reference point to move from
• Pressure-tested ten concepts through engineering feasibility and primary user research before committing to any
• Brought it together as a UX framework anchored in two user narratives where every screen mapped back to a real problem from research and every pattern tied to a pillar, principle, and trust ladder rung
• Brought exec, product, and engineering together on a single framework now driving the 2026 roadmap

The impact

Gave the company a single framework to rally behind. Teams now share a why, a clear shape, and a way to operate from a common reference point. The ten shortlisted concepts now act as themes the product team is shaping the 2026 roadmap against, translating into specific bets being built and shipped through Q3 and beyond.