Master Class Innovating with Business Design Thinking

You will start with learning a hands-on approach to move from a strategic context to concrete projects. You will learn to set up reliable, customer-oriented research to discover real user needs or, in other words, your triggers for innovation.

• Framing: based on your strategy you will define the scope and focus of the project and map the stakeholders.
• Research: based on your research questions, you and your users will go in search of new data and knowledge through qualitative user research (observation, customer journey mapping, etc.).
• Analyzing research results: which in-depth insights can be gained from your research? And to what valuable and meaningful solutions can they lead for your customers and users?
• Briefing: capturing a synthesis of all previous steps in a starter document, the design brief. You will turn this into an assignment with a sharp focus on meeting user needs. You will also describe how this project strategically contributes to the course you have set as an organization.

After this research phase you will have time to apply the insights to your own organization. This will help you find out the direction your organization should take and what your users actually need. You will be capable of drawing up a clear brief or project, ready to start your own journey.

Module 2 is all about co-creation and implementation. How do you move from a design brief to optimal results within a multidisciplinary team? How can you facilitate such processes? Which working methods give the best results?

You will get to work with simple yet powerful prototyping techniques such as “walkthrough” or “wireframing” to quickly and effectively generate tangible concepts which can be tested, developed, and applied. In parallel, you will also develop a business model to valorize our new concept.

Finally, you will reflect on the road you traveled. You will discover how design thinking can permanently change not only your organization and organizational culture but also your own way of thinking, gradually and bottom-up (i.e. through projects). You will prepare the first steps to scale up design thinking within your organization and you will reflect on the change this requires within an organization.

You will take the following three steps of the double diamond process:

• Idea generation: generating (through co-creation) as many new, innovative ideas as possible based on the design brief.
• Prototyping and testing: iterative process of building, testing and learning (together) of increasingly reliable prototypes of products, services or systems.
• Implementation: translation into a business model and outline of an implementation plan.

At the end of this program you will be able to:

• discover new, customer-focused and competitive opportunities regarding systems, processes, products and services;
• develop your creative talents and use them to solve problems and to discover or create opportunities; this will help you boost your company productivity;
• change your way of thinking: you will learn to think like your customers and to create synergies between ‘what the customer wants’ and ‘where your company want to go to’;
• improve the success rate and to minimize failures, as you will be thoroughly familiar with your customers’ needs and values;
• embrace complexity and use it according to the needs of your organization and customers;
• learn how to inspire and manage cross-disciplinary collaboration; by involving all levels, new partnerships will emerge, strengthening your organization;
• apply new insights and tools to improve the flow of knowledge and ideation processes;

Up till three months after the program, you can consult with our experts should you need any advice.