In today’s fragmented global landscape, assumptions made at headquarters no longer hold. In this article, Joanna Brassett, Founder and CEO of Studio intO, explores how default thinking derails innovation, and how intO’s Local Lens Approach embeds real local context into strategy and design. From fintech to AI, global teams use our insight model to create products that are not just adapted, but truly relevant. When you stop assuming, you start designing better.
The world isn’t just changing, it’s diverging.
From product teams to boardrooms, global innovation leaders are contending with rising complexity: fragmented markets, contested truths, culturally distinct tech ecosystems. But for those of us in the business of multi-region research, this isn’t a sudden shift. It’s a long-known reality: not all markets operate like the ones at HQ. And not every strategy travels.
At Studio intO, we’ve been solving for this divergence since 2011. Our mission has always been to challenge default thinking – the narrow assumptions and headquarter perspectives that too often shape global decisions. Through our Local Lens Approach, we embed lived local context into innovation, enabling products, services and strategies to succeed far beyond the culture in which they were created.
The risk isn’t global fragmentation. It’s global uniformity.
For decades, tech teams have operated on a kind of quiet consensus: that success at home signals success abroad. But internal assumptions – about behaviours, trust, even what “good UX” looks like – are shaped by specific cultural experiences. When these assumptions get baked into global strategy, they can fail fast and expensively.
We call this default thinking. And in a “splintered world” where cultures, infrastructures, and expectations diverge rapidly, it’s no longer viable.
Local context isn’t a metaphor. It’s a method.
At intO, we define local context as the lived experience of people navigating their specific environment—shaped by regulation, infrastructure, social values, symbolism and identity.
This includes:
Embedding this detail into decision-making changes the outcome and ensures relevance, not just reach.
intO’s Local Lens Approach is built to deliver real, contextual insight at speed and scale. We do this through a globally distributed structure that’s unlike any other research agency.
Our framework combines:
🧭 The Local Lens Flow
Problem → Context → Participants → Lenses → Insight → Action
Our work doesn’t sit in slide decks, it moves products forward. Clients come to us for access, but stay for the clarity and confidence our insight enables.
Here are just a few ways we help:
We’ve helped teams at Google, Amazon and Wise understand how AI, fintech and digital tools land in real-world contexts, which has helped them to adapt at speed. Not through localisation, but through relevance.
The challenges of fragmentation are real but so is the opportunity to build with more intention.
Where frameworks point to the need for nuance, we deliver it. Our model gives clients access to 140+ Local Researchers across 60+ countries, with simultaneous research capacity, ethical participant engagement, and local cultural translation built into every brief.
In short: we don’t just name the problem. We solve it.
Innovation doesn’t fail because teams lack data. It fails because they misunderstand people.
Global UX, product and strategy teams have a choice. Continue working from the centre and risk being out of step with the world. Or, embrace the edge, bring the local into view, and build something that truly fits.
At Studio intO, we’re proud to support the second path.
Because in a fragmented world, the most powerful strategy is one rooted in relevance.
If your team is ready to challenge assumptions and build relevance into global decisions, we’d love to help.
Book a call with Chloe to explore how intO’s Local Lens Approach can support your next move.
Email Chloe at Chloe Amos-Edkins if you’d like to learn more and discuss how we can support your research objectives and ambitions. [email protected]
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In fast-moving, remote-first product teams, empathy can erode - both with users and between colleagues. intO’s Empathy Days offer a one-day immersion that reconnects teams with real people and shared purpose. Blending fieldwork with reflection, these sessions create long-lasting clarity, alignment and motivation. In this article, Research Director, Laetitia Sfez, explains why they’re as energising as they are insightful.
In today’s fast-moving, globally distributed work environments, short-form research experiences like Empathy Days and Cultural Immersions are proving invaluable. As Research Director, Laetitia Sfez, explains, these formats reconnect teams with real users, either through energising, collaborative sessions or deep, contextual exploration in local markets. Though brief, both deliver enduring impact by challenging assumptions, aligning teams, and anchoring innovation in authentic human insight. This article helps you choose the right format, and shows how intO delivers each with strategic care and cultural sensitivity.
