A Golden Moment of Privacy and Peace
INDEX Design Workshop
INDEX is a Danish-based, non-profit organisation established in 2002 around the concept “Design to Improve Life”. INDEX works globally to promote and apply both design and design processes that have the capacity to improve the lives of people worldwide.
This summer INDEX invited 60 designers, engineers and business people to donate one day’s work in a workshop on September 6th about a very urgent UN Millenium Development goal.: 2.6 billion people in the world are in need of basic sanitation. That’s two out of five of us. As a consequence of missing sanitation, 133 million people suffer high-intensity infections every day and diarrhoea kills 1 life every 15 seconds – mostly children below 5.
In collaboration with Jack Sim, founder of World Toilet Organization, INDEX planned the day around three development themes for introducing low cost dry toilets in India – 1. brand, 2. product design and 3. business model. Pia Betton and partner Kim Fridbjørg from Built Identity were responsible for planning and facilitating the branding workshop. The concept developed on the day – A door to Your Dreams – evolves around the unusual possibility of a “Golden Moment of Privacy and Peace” in the crowded and busy everyday life of a poor citizen in India.
The theory and praxis behind Design Thinking
A two-day workshop at the Institute of Electronic Business in Berlin
Many definitions of Design Thinking can be found on the internet, for example:“Design thinking is a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an improved future result.” Thus sounds the definition on Wikipedia while Tim Brown from Design and Innovation Company IDEO defines it as: “Design thinking can be described as a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity.” This gives us a hint of what Design Thinking means but what about the theory behind it, the practical methods and tools and how can you actively use it in your Businnes?
On Friday 25th and Saturday 26th Pia Betton will be co-facilitating a two day workshops at the Institute of Electronic Business in Berlin. Co-lecturers are Prof. Dr. Markus Peschl from Vienna University, DI Thomas Fundneider from theLivingCore (Vienna), Prof. Peter Friedrich Stephan who teaching Cognitive
Design at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and Prof. Dr. Thomas Schildhauer and Sebastian Schmidt from the Institute of Electronic Business.
Besides Design Thinking Radical Innovation, Cognitive Design and Social Media and Crowdsourcing is on the agenda. Methods like Enabling Spaces, Scope and Drill-down, Cultural Probes, Re-framing, Attitude – Practise – Knowledge, Blue Print Maps and People Studies will be presented, explained and used through practical excercises.The overall focus is to teach how design theory and praxis can be implemented and successfully used in innovation and change processes in organisations.
It’s no longer possible to sign up for the workshop but a follow-up will be conducted in October. For update on the seminar, please send your e-mail address to p.betton@framework-identity.com
A brand building process
Building a brand identity that is real, attractive, unique and easily
Whether talking about private or business relations, the first encounter is the “make or break” moment. For companies it is crucial that they have a clear brand identity. Like a human voice or personality that authentically connects with their stakeholders. A brand identity that is real, attractive, unique and easily understood and communicated.
IFU is an independent, self-governing fund associated with the Ministry for Development Cooperation. IFU stands for The Danish Industrialisation Fund for Developing Countries. Together with Danish companies, they invest in commercial projects in developing countries.
IFU were looking to become more visible and well-known in Denmark. The main focus of this a process was to develop a strong and unique brand as a basis for IFU to reach their goals.
As a starting point for the strategic work, Pia Betton and business partner Flemming Andersen conducted eighteen interviews with IFU employees including people from the management team and members of the board. The objective was to identify the brand’s (the business’) core values.
A brand developing process for a self-governing fund.
The next step in the process was to analyse the situation in and around IFU. The values of an organisation are evident in every aspect of the organisations’ business routine even if not communicated directly to the public. Might this be client relations, direct marketing or treatment of its employees and strategic partners.
The results of the observations and interviews led to key conclusions concerning IFU’s future image and communication.
After presenting the results of the process framework identity facilitated two workshops with the management team and the employees where the new brand was refined. Our last contribution to the process was to develop a design briefing for a competition, where Denmark’s two best design agencies were invited to present their idea on how to visualise the new brand.
Innovative summer plans
Sunbathing at one of the many lakes in and around Berlin or gaining new knowledge and meeting innovative people for refreshing input and inspiration? If you feel more attracted to the second option, we suggest you join us at the summer camp at Berlin University of the Arts*
Many organisations are challenged by the rapid changes of today’s market and the increasingly high expactations of their stakeholders. To continiously generate and implement new ideas and market opportunities gives you a head start to your competitiors. Most managers are aware of this fact but are challenged in their everyday lifes because of structural and cultural boundaries.
For the Berlin University of the Arts Pia Betton and Prof. Peter Friedrich Stephan facilitate a three day seminar where Radical Innovation – design of concepts, processes and systems, ethnographic field work and cognitive design are on the agenda. Through talks, workshops and coaching you will gain new insight in how to embrace change. You will be introduced to methods and tools that can help you overcome organisational obstacles and actively and efficiently work with innovation in your organisation.
*Read more about the seminar here or contact Berlin University of the Arts for more information!
Three main obstructions for innovation
Organisations spend a lot of time and energy talking about innovation. Often they focus all of their energy on developing strategies and action plans for innovation or developing new ways to beat the competition.
Rarely are the discussions at the top level in organisations about the obvious obstructions to innovation. In the following, I will identify the three biggest and most frequent obstructions and give advice on how to overcome them.
1. Limiting assumptions
“Nobody knows our customers better than our account managers.”
“No analysis can give us more knowledge about our market that we already have.”
Innovation begins with asking questions. Often we forget to ask questions because we are experts within our area and have built up a clear picture of the situation we are in. Our questions are often driven by our assumptions – they keep us from asking the right questions.
The first steps towards a realistic picture of the market is to build your research upon objective, concrete knowledge about the market.
2. Old-fashioned structures
“Innovation is something they work with in the marketing department.”
“It is the responsibility of Sales and Marketing department to know about client needs – my focus as a product developer is to develop products.”
Due to rising complexity in the value chain, many industries have lost the ability to work cross-functionally and to see new possibilities within the planned strategies. The motivation to try out new things and to get out of the comfort zone where you might fail is being ruined by result-orientated bonus systems and pre-defined goals.
I believe that a focus on cross-functional idea development in organisations and positive attention around the employees who dare to ask challenging questions will improve the ability to innovate and motivate innovative thinking in organisations.
3. A narrow definition of innovation
“We increase our focus on innovation by increasing the budgets of R&D.”
Reducing innovation to being only innovation in product development means missing out on many other important innovation possibilities in the value chain. Innovation can be made within areas like HR, suppliers, partners, logistics, communication, etc. By establishing innovation as a positive value in the entire organisation, you will strengthen the company’s future ability to innovate at many levels.
Pia Betton
Founder, Managing Director and Senior Consultant
Not only is Pia Betton the founder and managing director of framework identity, she is also the personalisation of applying design thinking to business strategy development. As a trained graphic designer, Pia started her professional life in Danish design agencies and continued at the Berlin-based MetaDesign, where she became a member of the management board. Framework identity was founded in 2002.
Over the years, Pia has developed a strong business focus – both due to her managerial experience as well as to her facilitating the strategic decision-making processes prior to the execution of design processes. In her positions as manager, Pia has worked with many global brand clients.
Pia is a requested lecturer and facilitator. With her inspirational talks, she sets the scene at seminars and teaches at executive learning programmes. In her role as a senior consultant, she coaches management groups in change processes. Finally, Pia is a skilled concept developer and project manager with an excellent capacity for managing complexity.
Among other companies, Pia has worked for 180° Academy, G4S, DONG Energy, Stiftung Warentest, the Confederation of Danish Employers (DA), the Confederation of Professionals in Denmark (FTF), Nokia, YIT, Sparekassen Farsø and strandgaard & co.
p.betton@framework-identity.com
skype: piabetton