Design Sprint – Innovation method

Give innovations the voice of your customers on early stages

Design sprint for innovation success

In our EARLY BRANDS insights interview,  Elena shows us how design sprints foster innovation success in our digital age. As Innovation & Technology Consultant, she realizes innovative services and business models together with her colleagues and clients regularly using the innovation method of design sprints.

EARLY BRANDS Insights: Elena, what do you understand by design sprint?

Elena: From my point of view, it is a constructive way to create innovation solutions that fit with market and business needs. That includes new product or service development as well as the advancement of established solutions. It is all about co-creation: How can user experiences of tomorrow be created today? Thus, speed, creativity and agility are more important than a perfect product.User feedback is the key: early and continuously.

EARLY BRANDS Insights: Why do clients use design sprints for innovation development?

Elena: Design sprints are a fast and interactive way to develop and test innovations. Within 4-5 days, visual products or services can come to live. With a very creative and insight-orientated approach, we reach a 100% user-orientation. This is essential for innovation profitability – as innovations only reach realization stages when market relevance and economic benefits were ensured.

Moreover, design sprints foster trust and confidence for innovations. Employees can proactively embed their ideas and experiences. Thus, innovation development embeds different perspectives and expertise e.g. from purchase and sales departments, IT up to executive boards.

EARLY BRANDS Insights: How do design sprints usually start and what are the main courses of action?

Elena: Starting point is the development of a common understanding for the problem to be solved – from a market as well as from a company point of view. Thus, we explore the scope of a problem and build concrete use cases which shall be solved by the innovation. We specifically consider products and services that offer solutions for similar problems – from competitor insights as well as from cross-industry use cases. In that way, we promote discussions with a very touchable character.

EARLY BRANDS Insights: How do you move on – how do you creatively work with your team?

Elena: A very important step is the determination of a route. That means, we illustrate key steps and interactions a user runs through when using our product or service. For that, we use post it notes – agile and pragmatic. That helps us as innovation consulting within the dialogues with our clients and users. Quickly find solutions which satisfy user needs. Once objectives and thematic priorities are routed, we quickly jump in the sketching of creative solutions. That means to conceive how the product or service can look like and be used.

EARLY BRANDS Insights: How become developed solutions experienceable – and innovations measurable?

Elena: A good example is a klick-dummy which only possesses simplest features and functions of a solution. In that way benefits and values of an innovation can be experienced and tested on very early stages. Thus, early feedback from real users is very helpful.

EARLY BRANDS Insights: Where do you realize design sprints – what kind of atmosphere supports success?

Elena: We create an open, creative atmosphere. We realize design sprints on every location of the world. In our innovation consulting headquarter in Bremen, we have corresponding rooms which were used for creative design sprints on a regular base. Moreover, we have good experiences to work on locations close to our client’s markets and their users. Like a creative popup, locations can be build up everywhere.

EARLY BRANDS Insights: How do you customize design sprints to specific innovation issues of your clients?

Elena: We create and realize specific design sprints based on the innovation issues and topics of our clients. Once we started using design sprints, Google Ventures was a good Best Practice for us. I can recommend “The Sprint Book – Solve big problems and test new ideas in just five days”. A very good overview of different methods a design sprint combines and a lot of useful tips for moderation and implementation.

Last but not least a first-hand recommendation:

Be passionate and creative rather than perfect!

Catch the Future …!

Innovation terms easily explained

Agile innovation methods from innovation consulting

We from EARLY BRANDS Innovation & Technology Consultants use a variety of agile innovation and creativity methods that were selected and customized to the needs and requirements of our clients. But: What makes Lean-Startup, Business Model Canvas and Use Cases so popular? What are these terms about?

AGILITY AND LEAN STARTUP THINKING & ACTING

Currently, agility is one of the most popular keywords when we think about innovation management. Increasing speed and dynamic of our markets makes us rethink our habits: Inflexible plannings and project schedules are outdated and unrewarding. Market developments we see today, might be out-of-date tomorrow.

Today, innovation projects and new technologies need a flexible and quick development and realization. Thus, direct interactions with customers, close collaborations with employees and partners and minimum viable products + user feedback are essential: Think and act like lean, dynamic startups. Proactively and flexibly respond to fast changing customer needs. Create, develop and shape products, services and innovative business models with a step-by-step approach – adaptive and dynamic like a startup would do. Be open and responsive. Understand changes and setbacks as opportunities.

MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT / SOLUTION

We support leading companies to identify and realize innovative business opportunities at early stages. That means: speed and focus instead of perfection. Practice-orientation instead of planned economy. Simplicity and clarity. That is exactly what Minimum Viable Products (MVP) / Solutions are about. Explore, test and realize minimum viable products and solutions with real customers at very early stages. It enables to consider customer’s needs and requirements from the very beginning. Solutions that appeal can be further developed. Solutions that do not lead to success can be aborted prematurely. BUILD-MEASURE-LEARN from first prototype to successful innovation.

USE CASE

To understand customers’ needs and requirements, you need to put their glasses on. Use cases are concrete applications of innovation ideas in customer’s language. It is an agile, easy and highly valuable method to not only describe customers’ requirements but also the values and benefits of it – simple, quick and straight to the point. Thus, requirements and functionalities of innovations become transparent.

To embed customers in idea and innovation development at early stages, secures market relevance and innovation success. We create uses cases in our innovation consulting in many ways: from new business model development, to agile design sprints and workshops, through to derivation of unique value propositions for concept development.

BUSINESS MODEL CANVAS

How can we quickly and easily develop business models? How can we determine and further develop success factors of our innovation idea? How can we involve key stakeholders into business model development from employees, customers to tech partners? Our answer for these questions: In interactive, interdisciplinary business model work sessions. Use the business model canvas and determine key success factors of your new business idea.

We successfully apply the business model canvas in the collaboration with our partners. We use key elements from it and additionally embed specific demands and requirements. Tech companies for example, may have to think about “special ecosystem / tech partners” and “key technologies” in addition to core canvas elements like “target groups”, “channels” or “success metrics”.

KANBAN

KANBAN is a great method to organize tasks very efficiently and precisely. Like an “agile to-do-list”, KANBAN boards support cooperative and target-orientated working environments. To split up tasks and project steps into “to do”, “in-progress” and “done” in time frames of “today”, “current week” and “storage” is very valuable. Post-it notes with tasks and responsibilities can easily and agilely be juggled and shared within the team – wheter manually or digitally. In our innovation consulting, we make use of the KANBAN method for different internal fields of tasks as well as within the collaboration with our partners.

Catch the Future …!