Episode
Why the best hardware careers look like wrong turns from the outside | Felicity Boyce
- Podcast
- WHY DESIGN?
- Published
- Apr 16, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 4112
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Summary
What do you do when the work you're best at starts to feel like the problem? In this episode of Why Design, Felicity Boyce shares the belief that sits at the heart of her work: that understanding how something is made, at factory scale, under pressure, with the wrong release agent and a cycle time that doesn't add up, is more valuable than any theory you carry out of university. As Head of Material Innovation at Koroyd, she leads the development of the tubular core technology that is now inside helmets and body protection products used across sports, industrial, motorsport, and defence markets, inside a company just acquired by MIPS for 40 million euros. Rather than following a planned career trajectory, Felicity built her expertise through saying yes: to factory trips others declined, to project responsibility that appeared during redundancy rounds, to a year inside a nappy recycling facility learning waste streams and polymer chemistry from the ground up, and eventually to a job offer in Monaco from a team she already trusted. That sequence of decisions led her to one of the more interesting material science roles in European hardware. This conversation isn't about impact protection materials. It's about what you learn by being physically present when things go wrong in a factory. This conversation isn't about sustainability credentials. It's about the weight of making things at volume, and what you do when that weight becomes a reason to change direction. This conversation isn't about relocating for work. It's about what it looks like to build a career without a map, and why gut instinct and a good team around you turn out to be the main navigational tools. Join the Why Design community: teamkodu.com/whydesign What You'll Learn 🔩 Why the best material science career…