The Water Game
Where does water come from?
A clean, constant supply of drinking water is essential to every community none the less water is something we all take for granted as a commodity in our part of the world.. When we turn on the tap, water comes out.
In a close collaboration with Grontjemij | Carl Bro, a leading sustainable design, engineering and management consultancy based in 20 countries, framework identity and Built Identity have developed an inspirational “game” called The Water Game. Target groups are water suppliers and the aim is to re-think the significance of water for the modern man. The Water Game raises questions that give inspiration, input and food for thought. It works as a dialogue tool that boards, management groups and employes at water can use in the process of developing the future strategy of their local waterwork.
The Water Game was presented at a recent fair organised by the Danish Water and Waste Water Association (DANVA), a national association of water and waste water utilities. Though scepticism was shown at the beginning several waterworks were curious about the game and its use it in their strategic work.
Stephan Bohle
Senior Consultant
Stephan is a design and communication expert with international experience in developing brands in the consumer good and service sector and initiating innovative business concepts.
Sustainability and social design have become a focal point in Stephan’s professional activities. As freelance consultant for futurestrategy, he supports companies in the development and implementation of sustainable business models. Furthermore, he shares his experience in teaching engagements held at private universities in Berlin and Hamburg.
Before becoming a consultant Stephan was the Managing Director at a creative agency with 20 employees. His province included the strategic and process-oriented implementation of all design-related issues and well as creative work. With the support of trend and market analysts he developed design and brand-positioning concepts for a wide range of industries, successfully placing products and services on the market.
Stephan has received numerous national and international awards for his work (including nomination for the German Design Award, winner of the Corporate Design Award, Art Director’s Club, etc.).
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 new year, a new business?
Commercialisation strategies for the green market
There is an ever growing focus on green business due to increasing consumer demand. Events like the recent Climate Conference in Copenhagen create an even greater world wide awareness.
Large American enterprises like Wal-Mart and DELL have recognised that green business is the future and are joining projects to help consumers identify “green” electronics (source: http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/19627). Scott O’Connell, environmental strategist at Dell recently said: “Customers tell us they want to purchase electronics that have a minimal impact on our planet. This is an effort to help them do that using a common methodology that manufacturers across the industry participate in”.
SME’s (small and medium sized enterprises) have an advantage in this race, being more agile and hence able to change strategy and processes within a shorter time span. This being said, it is not an easy process to re-structure your whole business concept. But since major retailers are re-structuring, why shouldn’t you?
On Friday, February 12th you have the opportunity to participate in a workshop, that can dress you for climbing the ladder towards the green market.
These are some of the questions that will be brought up by the people behind the workshop: consultant company in sustainable business, futurestrategy, the “green” PR agency sieben&siebzig and agency for consumer sociology, OC EO CONSULT.
Throughout the one-day workshop core themes of the process of succesfull commercialisation of green products and services will be presented and discussed.
- Trade innovation
- Concierge Retailing & Pop Up Retailing
- Bottom-up-approach – best practices
- Open Source & Bazaar Marketing
- Public Relations for Green Lifestyle
- The Foundation of Sustainable Communication (PR)
- Guerilla-Marketing
The workshop participants will gain insight in green business and be provided with the proper tools for entering the green market. Learn how to create new business concepts, approach a new target group and develop commercialisation strategies.
Find more information and sign up for the event here.
A one-day workshop: Designing Innovation - Design for Innovation
LEARNTEC is the leading international trade fair and convention for vocational education, learning and information technology. The fair in 2010 is the 18th of its kind and will take place at Karlsruhe Trade Fair Center from the 2. to 4. February 2010.
The workshop facilitators
Pia Betton, Founder and Managing Director of framework identity will conduct a one-day workshop on 4. February together with a team of great thinkers and practitioners from the fields of strategy, innovation and design:
Thomas Fundneider, Founder and Managing Director of tf consulting, a consultancy for Strategy and Innovation.
Thomas focuses on collaborative innovation processes (open innovation, crowd sourcing and creating and executing development/design competitions), radical innovation, design thinking, supporting start-ups and conceptualising and creating innovation hubs and enabling spaces.
Markus F. Peschl is professor for Cognitive Science and Philosophy of Science at the Dept. of Philosophy at the University of Vienna, Austria.
Markus’ focus of research is on the question of knowledge (knowledge creation/innovation, construction, and representation of knowledge) in various contexts e.g: in natural cognitive systems, in science, in organisations and in educational settings. Markus follows a radically interdisciplinary approach integrating concepts from the natural sciences, philosophy of science, from the humanities, as well as from knowledge technology.
Peter Friedrich Stephan is a designer and writer focusing on Design Thinking: He works on various projects within Knowledge Design and Creative Business Design helping organisations develop clear concepts for internal and external communication. Concepts that meet user needs and promote tangible business results. Furthermore Peter is a professor in Theory and Design at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and a tutor at the Masterprogramm Leadership in digitaler Kommunikation at Berlin University of the Arts.
The workshop…
At the Leading Edge Workshop, “New Methods and Tools for the innovation and knowledge generation”, participants will gain insight in what new tools and approaches are used when working with innovation and generating knowledge.
The workshop will be conducted as an open space workshop, where the different tools will be introduced in short group sessions. The participants will get a hands-on experience with how to use the tools and be able to discuss, in which situations what tool will be appropriate to us.
*About LEARNTEC *
LEARNTEC is a top notch source for information about different approaches to learning, using online and traditional media, which are both effective and free of time constraints.
During the three days more than 170 providers will be showcasing their solutions for vocational education, e-learning and knowledge management. International experts from both practical and theoretical fields will bring together business, science and academia and present the future of learning at Germany’s largest congress, complete with best practice examples.
If you wish to know more go to LEARNTEC’s website
Innovation and education in Roskilde
For months now we have worked on an innovation process with with Roskilde, a Danish municipality, together with our partners Per Løkken and Build Identity. The aim of this process is to develop a strategy that guides Roskilde in the direction of becoming Europe’s leading, educational city in the year 2030.
As an important part of the process, we wanted “the silent voice” (the users) that are often overruled or ignored by “the known voice” (the professionals) to be heard. In this case, we defined the “silent voice” as being students from Roskilde’s different educational institutions. In many cases, the future work force and citizens of Roskilde. The userdriven innovation process is divided into three stages:
Stage one, Involvement
We invite the students (the users) to become co-developers and share thoughts, wishes and dreams and contribute ideas on the project.
Stage two, Idea- and concept development
The material we are left with form the basis for stage two where the people that normally work with strategy development in the municipality (“the known voice”) take part in transforming all the thoughts and inputs into concrete ideas and concepts. Again, students are invited into this process
Stage three, realisation
Development and realization of innovative concepts for the municipality.
The grand opening
Last Tuesday (November 24) was the highlight of stage one. A one day innovation work shop were we had invited seventy students from various schools and universities to participate in six different work shops. Furthermore employees from the municipality (the educational institutions, politicians etc.) were working together in a seventh workshop. The workshops were designed as an experience for many senses where the participants through play and creativity explored future lifestyles within 6 areas of everyday life and education.
For you Danish speaking readers you can follow this link to watch a small video. A feature by a regional tv station that stopped by on the innovation day.
Innovation in Greece?
From mid July, my family and I will be situated mainly on Kythera, Greece for a period of 6 months. Since Kythera is located only 40 minutes by plane from Athens regular trips to see clients and partners while away is not a problem.
Everybody knows Greece as a great place for vacation. Simple pleasures like sunny weather, picturesque villages, delicious food at reasonable prices and a seemingly endless coastline attract visitors worldwide. But what does Greece have to offer when it comes to business?
It is no secret that the economy isn’t doing so well and The European Commission even predicts a greek recession this year. So what can be done to change things?
Together with the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB) the Kokkalis Foundation has pointed out three main factors responsible for Greece’s innovation underperformance: 1) venture capital creation, 2) legal framework and business start up requirements, 3) the relationships between the university and industry. In order to support and guide investors who show interest to the greek market Invest in Greece was founded in 2008. It is the official Investment Promotion Agency of Greece that promotes and facilitates private investment and support and it does so free of charge. They have initiated networks, services and events in order to attract investors over the next years. It seems like Greece is getting around to create the framework for innovation but do they have the potential to develop an actual innovation culture? I’m excited to get a closer view on the greek market and see for myself where the potential lies.
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!
Designing a sustainable society
3rd International Future Center Summit
In May we are participating in a summit in Stockholm, together with our network partners from Strandgaard & Co and The International Center for Innovation.
The participants will be an inspiring, international group of practitioners and thinkers – people from existing and up-coming so called future and innovation centers. Future Centers are open innovation environments where concepts are developed to support organisations in becoming more systematic in their process of user involvement.
At the summit professionals with shared interests and visions will have the opportunity to exchange knowledge and experience and participate in workshops on social entrepreneurship, intercultural collaboration and society design. The summit is highly relevant for us and our work with both the International Center for Innovation, Future Strategy and 180° Academy where user-driven innovation plays a big role. We hope to extend our network and gain new knowledge that we can integrate in our work with our network partners.
More information about the summit can be found here
Summit Leaders
Prof. Leif Edvinsson – UNIC & University of Lund & The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Per Östling – Dalenum Development
Henrik Danckwardt – IC Community
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.
Get the picture?
Recently we did a innovation workshop for a developer of extensions for the global motor car industry. The task for the employees was to come up with new, innovative business ideas. We trained them in different visual tools to discover, develop and share business ideas and throughout the day 4 new business ideas were born.
Among others they were asked to do a cartoon that illustrates their client interaction and communication today and in the future.
When we ask people to draw someone will always say, that they can´t draw, that they are not visual persons. But after we assure them, that you don’t have to be a expert to visualize something, that it is about making very simple drawings and get the message through, they almost always end up with very insightful pictures. It is a very powerful tool and a lot of fun!
5 questions about fi
Following a discussion of how easy or hard it is to understand what goes on at fi and what our focus is, I decided to take on the role as an outsider and interview managing director Pia Betton for a few quick answers:
First of all: what’s the difference between innovation and creativity?
Creativity is an ability to change the usual perspectives on a situation or a challenge and through doing so, coming up with new ideas.
Innovation is a good idea that works. If it doesn’t work, it is an idea or an invention. In order for innovation to deserve the title, it needs to be viable (technology, processes, logistics), profitable and attractive. In this case attractive is defined as covering a need, solving a problem, saving time, opening up for new possibilities etc.
What methods do you most often apply in innovation sessions?
At framework identity we work with very different tools and methods, dependent on the challenge we have. Very often we use visualisation as a great way of creating clarity. A lot of the challenges we get from our customers are about creating clarity and overview. For this, an illustration is much stronger than words. We also use reduction as a very important tool. In today’s very complex world, reducing complexity and finding simple answers create overview. If you have overview, you can work on answers. If a group of people try to find a solution for a challenge that they don’t have a shared understanding of, the chance of finding a common solution is very small.
Managers have very little time. They come unprepared to meetings, because they don’t have the time to create overview. By interviewing people and by analysing the answers we can create an overview that can enable them to make the right decisions within very little time.
So… in other words, the goal is…?
To gain overview, clarity, shared perspectives and enable people to make the right choises
In general, what barriers do you find most important to deal with, when helping a company be more innovative?
To think out of the box, to collect the necessary information both quantity- and quality-wise
Not to work on assumptions
To ask open questions
To ask more questions
To see different solutions, dependent on the choises made
How do you/fi document your innovation-workshop findings?
We document our work very thoroughly. That is important for the next steps in the process. We also filter out all the most important decisions and key challenges and focus on them when analysing the results. We give clear recommendations for the next steps
A new dining experience
- What will the future service concepts look like?
On a friends recommendation I went to a restaurant called Inamo on a recent visit to London, a “pioneering Oriental fusion restaurant and bar” as they call themselves . The reason is their unusual service concept with the intention of leaving the control of the dining experience to the customer.
We were seated as in every other restaurant but quickly noticed that the table top wasn’t a normal wooden or metal one but an interactive screen. A waiter introduced us to the concept: You place your order yourself, whether food or drinks. When clicking through the menu you se a picture of every dish (on your “plate”) along with a short description. By clicking on a dish or drink the system saves it in an order folder until you activate it, since all meals are served within 15 minutes from when the order is placed. This means you plan yourself what you want to eat when and hardly have any contact with the waiters.
When introduced to the interface I first connected it with Surface, an advanced touch-screen product from Microsoft, that I saw a demonstration of in Dubai when visiting the Microsoft Office with 180° Academy. Of course Surface is a totally different product but the version at Inamo offers a service similar to some of those intended for the Microsoft Surface. Since having experienced a close-up live demonstration of Surface, I can tell that it is amazing what you can do with the product and the possibilities/business ideas are endless! With a thought through concept a lot of services can become more user friendly and efficient which will surely make a lot of people happy, offering self-service in a new dimension. At the same time it might lead to a discussion about how products like Surface influence the level of social interaction in every-day life boosting the development of society becoming slowly more individual. Still, I’m excited to se which products will be introduced in the future as a result of the development in this product range!
Social innovation in all projects!
11 December 2008, 13:57
On December 4, I had the opportunity to attend a conference on social business, held and arranged by Copenhagen Business School and WeCollaborate.org
Keynote speaker was Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 Nobel Peace Price winner.
At the conference Dr. Yunus argued through two main points, that social businesses and profit oriented businesses must co-exist:
Point 1: The wealth and progress of the world, are in many ways driven by man’s search for profit. Without it, only few of the important technological and medicinal innovations the world has seen, would have been invented. And that’s just two areas; the list goes on and on.
However, Dr. Yunus says, that kind of money focus has a serious flaw: Too strong a focus will make us forget the real important things in life, such as fighting poverty and inequality, when it’s in our power.
Point 2: In order to make the world better, as a whole, we need to have social businesses who, instead of seeking profit, find their sole purposes in the social agenda. (That is to say, the issues we as societies around the world, decide to change)
Many people have argued, as did Jeppe Thoubo (Director of Danish Industry) at the conference, that it must be possible to find a way to have both social business and money-making business in the same company. Dr. Yunus argued that profit-making businesses, will always want more profit – that’s the way our markets work and that therefore the two things should be kept apart. Whether it would be possible, remains to be thoroughly tested in action. At the conference, Managing Director of Grundfos LIFELINK, Peter Todbjerg Hansen, presented the LIFELINK-project, Grundfos’ attempt to merge social business and profit-making. It’ll be very interesting to see how it works out for them.
We at fi believe in testing whether merging the two goals is possible. Doing this kind of business combination, merging the ability and will to improve the world and ideas for making money, actually corresponds very well to a key saying of fi’s friend from the Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), Prof. Teng-Kee Tan: “Innovate with a purpose!” The idea here, corresponding with the idea of social innovation, is that there are multiple goals for any project.
Whenever we go out and participate in innovation projects, we try to realise an idea’s true potential for change and not just the economic side of it. Employee happiness, customer satisfaction, shareholder and business-to-business willingness to participate in innovative projects are more and more becoming dependent on how “good” a project feels. Thus, the socially innovative perspective of any given business project ought to be considered in the future.
Fight the crunch!
We hear about the recession all the time. The strategies for dealing with it are very different, but when visiting different organisations, both private and public, there are similarities. Important changes are postponed, every new venture is analysed carefully and maybe even put on hold, staff costs cut and hiring stopped. All of which are potentially dangerous precautions for any organisation.
By changing the perspective, the crunch actually creates new opportunities for organisations who are willing to fight the norm.
One of them has already been proved by a small organisation, I admire; Middelfart Sparekasse (a Danish bank). Because or despite of the recession, just a few weeks ago they were awarded the title “The best workplace in Denmark”, by the Great Place to Work® Institute. For me, that is a great example of how putting people first will always be a winning strategy. Make sure you build up confidence and trust, both towards your employees, clients and other stakeholders. If you let them down, they will let you down.
In short, for many organisations the crunch can be a great wake-up call that allows you to focus your organisation on what REALLY makes a difference. Trust, clarity, reliability and true value.
More about the nomination in Berlingske Nyhedsmagasin (Danish)