Design Driven Strategy

Design driven strategy, what is it?

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Methodology, ethnographic research

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Our strategy: envisioned, storyboard

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NEWS

HDK University of Gothenburg / Business & Design / Design, Strategy, Innovation / 2014 Spring semester

Liseberg helping their visitors to prevent skin cancer.

Through their partnership with Swedish company Intellego helping them to provide a SunSmart environment to lower the risk of getting sunburned.

* The frontpage is created using the design method ‘tomorrow’s headlines’ to visualize a possible future.

Table of contents Introduction Editors´ word Strategy

Review of current opinions

Design driven strategy Review of current opinions Case: Intellego Technologies Ltd. History

Current Vision, Mission and Aims Core values Vision Mission

Mapping out the current situation

SWOT

Internal perspective – Key resources

External perspective – Value constellation

Conclusion – issues identified

Our focus Methodology Phase 1: Background

research

Phase 2: Choosing target user perspective

Phase 3: Ethnographic research Ethnographic interviews

Findings

Limitations

A new design driven strategy Internal Strategy

Strategy Statement

External strategy New business model – co-creation of value

New production chain

Our proposed strategy: envisioned Storyboard

Offering map

Reflection References

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A new DDS for Intellego Technologies Ltd.

Introduction Editors´ word

Dear Reader,

What you are about to experience is the journey of five Business and Design students in their attempt to find out what strategy, design and innovation is all about and how can they be combined in order to create success for companies. To figure this out, students formed a project group and branded it ‘Not Your Mother’s Brand’ (NYMB in short). They started the project with the aim to develop a design-driven strategy for Intellego, the UV exposure indicator producer, in order to support their expansion in next five years.

NYMB started their journey by firstly putting down their own internal aims and goals for the project: to have fun, be creative and learn something new. Values that were present during the whole process of the project and formed their team and work.

Next step was to map the company, Intellego, by using several different business models. While NYMB evaluated and analyzed the company and its environment, it became obvious to them that Intellego should focus on their core competencies: Research and ­Development (R&D).

The project continued with secondary research about the industry and new possible markets. NYMB could see the opportunities in areas such as beauty industry, agriculture, children, food storage and warehouse, government and public health care, pets and farm

The Team Not Your Mother’s Brand

Bibiana Pufflerova - Management & Strategy Jing Zhang - Furniture Designer & Cultural Studies Karin Lycke - Graphic Designer & Art Director Lucia Ciranova - Marketing & Design Research Malin Olsson - International Business & Marketing

animals and the reversed problem: when not getting enough sun. Based on the evaluation of these different areas and the industry, NYMB decided to focus on Intellego’s already largest end user: children.

At this stage, NYMB spotted an opportunity in understanding the children’s true needs and how the products could be developed further to meet them.

To find this out, NYMB conducted an ethnographic research in local kindergarten. These findings became the departing foundation for their final concept.

NYMB developed a concept about creating value for other companies - a way to take advantage of Intellego’s core resources and make profit from contractual partnerships with companies with existing products where Intellego technology can be applied and create values for their final end users.

Finally, to visualise the strategy, NYMB used the local amusement park Liseberg as an example.

Performing all of this in only two weeks, NYMB are happy with what they achieved. They did not only reach their goals and aims about having fun and learn more about design, strategy and innovation, they also got to learn from each other’s different backgrounds and share their knowledge, wine bottles and several delicious cakes.

Enjoy!

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A new DDS for Intellego Technologies Ltd.

Strategy Review of current opinions

Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?

That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, said the Cat. I don’t much care where, said Alice.

Then it doesn’t matter which way you go, said the Cat. Lewis Carroll: Alice in Wonderland

A strategy can be described as a rough action plan for how to reach the goals of a company in the best possible way (Mårtensson, 2009). A strategy describes how the company should work; it is a plan for achieving the business idea of the company. Normally, strategy contains clarifications of what competitive advantages the company should develop and utilize; strengths, weaknesses and threats; in what product and service areas the company should act; what customers the company should target and how to target them; how the company should meet the competitors threats; what kind of organization structure the company should have; what competence is needed and how to ensure it; which resources that are required and how the business will be financed. (Ax, Johansson & Kullvén, 2009).

But there are also opinions about strategy as a more flexible and adaptive tool. Such as Mintzberg’s (1978) concept of emergent strategy (that was later developed further in a book Mintzberg, 2000). This distinction between what he calls the deliberate strategy and the emergent strategy, advocates a strategy created from the companies responses to unanticipated events in its environment, not only being based on historical events in the company. He thinks that managers overestimate

their ability to predict the future and that it involves a lot of danger to have a fixed strategy in the competitive environment we are experiencing today. Instead, managers should be more concerned about what is happening in their surrounding environment and adapt to those changes.

Also Martin (2014) is critical towards the traditional strategy planning. He addresses the fact about how scary strategic planning can be, since it is actually about trying to foresee the unforeseeable future. And to tackle this challenge he states that executives tries to turn it into a problem and tries to solve it with established tools, looking back in the company’s history.

Doing this is, according to Martin, ”a truly terrible way to make strategy.” (Martin, 2014, p. 80). He states that fear and discomfort is an essential part of strategy making and that strategy is about increasing the odds of success and not about eliminating risks. It is about figuring out what you want, what it would take to get it and if it is realistic to try it out. Furthermore he claims that strategy should be outside the comfort zone and not a result of hours planning and using models to get the perfect solution. Creating revenue plans is only a distraction from the strategist’s much harder job: finding ways to acquire and keep customers.

According to Collins and Porras (1996) the key to long-term success is to have a well established core values in the company and keep the strategy dynamic and flexible to change with the world around the company.

Furthermore, strategy development and implementation is closely connected to creation of business model. Tikkanen et al.(2005) states that the function of the strategy is “to give meaning and direction to the development of the company’s business model.”

Regarding the function of business model, Davenport, Leibold and Voelpel (2006) define business model as “a way of doing business as reflected by the enterprise’s core value propositions for customers”. In the literature on value creation and value co-creation, value is used as an abstract concept that seldom is specified in more concrete terms, other than that value is a relationship between what one benefits and what one sacrifices. On a general level, value for customers means that they after having been assisted by the provision of a resource (manufacturing business; goods logic) or by a process or set of processes (service business; service logic) are or feel better off than before (Grönroos, 2008).

A new DDS for Intellego Technologies Ltd.

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A new DDS for Intellego Technologies Ltd.

Design driven strategy Review of current opinions

The world is in a post-industrial design age in which systems and services rule the business and where interactions and experiences are often the products of design. Last years, there is a shift in roles from design as a function in product development toward design as strategy of organizations. In order to generate significant new wealth for society, the companies must create new sustainable competitive strategies, value driven business models, and new work processes. Throughout the world there are clear indications of the strategic importance of design in determining competitiveness (Bruce, Bessant, 2002). Design-conscious or designled firms outperform their competitors and firms that invest in design are more profitable or successful than those that do not (Kotler & Rath, 1990; Danish Design Centre, 2003; Kootstra et al., 2009; the Design Council, The Economist Intelligence Unit, 2013).

transformation of the whole business models. Borja de Mozota, B. (2006) based her study on the research of design-oriented European SMEs, describes the basis of a value model for design as differentiator, integrator, and transformer and emphasizes that design create value in management with the vision in the center. The role of design is to bridge vision with reality by envisioning where to go, defining what to do, and doing it efficiently and effectively (Gardien, Gilsing, 2013).

Design is all about action on the contrary with business strategy that too often turns out to be only talked about. Design could teach the organizations how to make things “feel real,” while business strategy today remains largely irrelevant to the people who are supposed to make it happen (Liedtka, 2010). It means that business strategies need to be experienced to feel real, not just thought.

experiences. According to Kumar (2013), innovation should emphasize on what people do, their behaviour, activities, needs and motivations, not on the product.

Therefore, studying people´s overall experience, innovation should focus not only on the obvious experience of “using the product”, but on the host of activities that surround the context in which it is used. Scholars highlight that an open innovation and network context is fundamental for innovation driven by design (Bertola and Teixeira, 2003; Design Council, 2008).

Design innovation should be practised collaboratively as innovation process exists in parallel to many other equally important processes in an organization and needs to integrate well with them. Design-driven innovation starts by understanding people, not by the identification of business opportunity or technology possibility (Kumar, 2013).

Therefore, the key area of debates nowadays is how organizations could work with strategy development and implementation with the help of design in its broadest multidisciplinary sense in order to deliver value and experience to the end users. Design became a thinking form, an approach and a series of tools serving changes in different systems, including economic, social, and environmental systems (Zurlo, Cautela, 2014). According to Bruce and Bessant (2002) who have taken more integrated approach to put design in the heart of business, design is seen as the core business process, not just as peripheral or specialist activity. Design as a core business process involves multiple activities and draws upon many different perspectives. Writing on ‘Strategy as Innovative Design’ (2010), Hatchuel et al. describe design as a tool to stimulate innovation, and that design activity focused on innovation can ‘emphasise future strategies based on the creation of desirable unknowns’.

Battistela et al. (2012) and Gardien and Gilsing (2013) state that nowadays, design enables innovative

To depart from the meaning perspective, Verganti (2008) proposed the model called “design driven innovation”. It is “a strategy that aims at radically changing the emotional and symbolic content of products, i.e. their meanings and languages, through a profound understanding of broader changes in society, culture and technology.” Battistela et al. (2012) pointed out that company can implement a design driven innovation strategy not only to create new meanings in the products as the product is only one of the building blocks of the business model, but also new meanings in the other building blocks of their business model. The business models that are shaped through a strategy that conveys a deliberate meaning, the experts called “meaning strategy”.

Even though, design is being valued as a source of competitive advantage, it is still often overlooked by companies and public institutions. Research has demonstrated that design can have an impact at both the micro level of the firm and as a driver of growth at macro level, however, there are still barriers to the large-scale adoption of design into innovation programmes and policies. The main reason could be that outcomes of design investment are considered as unpredictable and the expectations as vague. Most of the time, organizations only record the expenses coming from the investments into design, but do not specifically account for the income resulting from design investments. Design decisions that are not based on any numbers or facts, but mostly on aesthetic seem to be subjective what makes it hard to persuade decision makers to believe in potential of design.

Therefore, design is still treated in many companies as an unquantifiable value driver (Zec, 2011).

In the scenario, firms and consumers interact to co-create needs and co-propose breakthrough meanings and product languages (Battistella et al., 2012).

Innovation in this context, should be build around user experiences and focus on the nature of these

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A new DDS for Intellego Technologies Ltd.

Case: Intellego Technologies Ltd. History

The idea to create a product that indicates how much UV radiation a person is exposed to, occurred to the current CEO Claes Lindahl on a hot summer day. He has sensitive skin and was tired of being sunburned all the time. Along with others, Claes Lindahl began sketching the solution.

The goal was to develop a simple and effective UV indicator with high accuracy that could tell the user when it’s time to put on more sunscreen or to go into the shade. The work resulted in the formation of

Intellego Technologies Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Intellego) and the Smartsun wristband, which has been introduced to stores in April 2013.

Intellego is a Swedish company founded in 2011. Almi invest is the largest shareholder, besides the CEO Claes Lindahl himself. The patented technology is based on an ink that changes color when exposed to UV radiation. The ink is developed in their own R&D department, and then produced at Chalmers School of Technology. The bands themselves are printed and

Current Vision, Mission and Aims The main conflict in the company is cause by different priorities amongst the shareholders: CEO Claes Lindahl values quality and innovation in front of rapid development whereas investors of Intellego want the company

to quickly expand in the next five years in order to get return on their investment (C.Lindahl, 2014). Today, the company describes its vision, mission and its core values ​​as follows:

Core values

Vision

What we believe in and how we will behave.

What we want to be.

Collis, 2008, p.85

Collis, 2008, p.85

Reliability.

To develop products which are the obvious

The band should work 100 % of the time.

choice for people who wish to monitor their UV exposure.

Mission Why do we exist. Why is it important what we do.

Collis, 2008, p.85

To develop the most reliable and easy to use UV indicator technologies.

packed in Borås. Before distribution, quality checked is made by the independent operators.

At the moment, the wristbands are sold both under the Smartsun-brand and private labels – at pharmacy, hotels and various retailers – as a medical product.

The company’s largest customer segment are mothers who buy the wristbands for their children. The wristband is currently available in Europe and Mexico, and Intellego is also negotiating with parties in Australia.

Their largest market is Spain.

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A new DDS for Intellego Technologies Ltd.

Case: Intellego Technologies Ltd. Mapping out the current situation

In order to be able to create a design strategy for Intellego, a deeper understanding of the company’s current situation was needed. After gathering information about Intellego through discussion with CEO Claes Lindahl, secondary online research on intellego-technologies.com, smartsun.se and other internet sources, we began to analyze the company’s current challenges and opportunities using the traditional and powerful SWOT analysis.

Furthermore, the company’s key resources were mapped to understand Intellego’s internal perspective, followed by the value network identification for an external perspective as well as the Business Model Canvas to obtain a comprehensive overview of the company and the environment they operate in. In the right column, you can read more about the methodology used and their origin.

SWOT Strenghts

Opportunities

+ Strong R&D + Developed Ink + Already built network of subsidiaries + Expertis + Awarness of skin cancer + Current need for it + Accuracy

+ New use of ink + New target groups + Braclet as fashion accessory + Push the Intellego brand +N ew shapes & forms of the braclet + Sponsorships + Cooperations

Weaknesses

Threats

– Low awarness of product – Low budget – Little brand awarness – Low span of control when produced for private label – Has to rely on distributors – Lost in translation – No price control in retail

– Alternative form of the ink – Better forms of UV measurement –B ad performance of similar products –N ot sustainable – have to keep throwing them away

Internal perspective – Key resources All firms are controlling various types of assets, capabilities, information, organizational processes and knowledge – together they form the company’s resources (Barney, 1991).’If a resource exhibits VRIO (Value, Rarity, Imitability, Organization) attributes,

the resource enables the firm to gain and sustain competitive advantage (Rothaermel, 2012, p.5). Resources can be divided into two categories: Tangible and intangible. To gain an understanding of Intellego’s resources we conducted a list:

Tangible R&D facilities, Ink, Gothenburg office, warehouse, website Intangible The knowledge of CEO Claes Lindahl, investor-relationships, distributorrelationships, the knowledge at R&D department, the knowledge at ink-producing unit at Chalmers, ink-patent

Company analysis methods used

SWOT The SWOT-method is a core strategy tool for understanding your strengths and weaknesses, and for identifying both the opportunities open to you and the threats you face. From using the SWOT one can craft the first brief of a strategy that could help distinguish a company from its competitors. This technique was first created

by Albert Humphrey, who led a convention at the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) in the 1960s and 1970s using data from Fortune 500 companies (Mind Tools, 2014).

KEY RESOURCES Resource based view (RBV) is an approach to achieve competitive advantage from valuable tangible or intangible resources that emerged in 1980s and 1990s, after the major works published by Wernerfelt (The Resource-Based View of the Firm, 1984), Prahalad and Hamel (The Core Competence of The Corporation, 1990) and Barney (Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage, 1991). The supporters of this view argue that organizations should look inside the company to find the sources of competitive advantage. According to the RBV, it is much more feasible to exploit external opportunities using existing resources in a new way rather than trying to acquire new skills for each different ­opportunity.

VALUE CONSTELLATION The traditional thinking about value is grounded in the assumption and the model of an industrial economy. According to this view, every company occupies a position on the value chain. However, today this understanding of value is outmoded.

Global competition, changing markets and new technologies are opening up for new ways of creating value (Normann, Ramirez, 1993). In a value constellation, different actors work together to co-produce value.

The underlying strategic goal is to create an ever improving fit between competencies and customers.

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A new DDS for Intellego Technologies Ltd.

Case: Intellego Technologies Ltd.

External perspective – value constellation Mapping out the value constellation allowed us to develop an understanding of how value is created in the customer context (Lavén, 2014). We decided to derive from Smartsun’s primary customer – the mother. The mother is buying the wristband for her child, thus making the child the end-user. Therefore we mapped out the value constellation around this finding.

The one thing that caught our attention was the lack of feedback channel from the customers back to Intellego. The CEO of Intellego states that the company is very much concerned about what the customer thinks of the product – but how do they get hold of that information today?

Value constellation Intellego

Production

CEO Claes Lindahl

In-house R&D

Raw material supplier

Ink producers in Chalmers

Almi invest

Ivestors

Manufactures

Warehouse

Parents

Cancer org.

Theme parks

Missing feedback

Grand Parents

END USER: Child

Holiday producers

Doctors

Nurses

Advisors in pharmacies

Teachers Distributors

Private Label

Influencers

Own brand

Hotels

Beach Stores

Theme parks

Webshops

Pharmacys

Retail stores

Sun screen producers

Cancer organisations

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A new DDS for Intellego Technologies Ltd.

Case: Intellego Technologies Ltd. Conclusion – issues identified

The different methods used gave us a good overview of the current situation and position that Intellego is in at the moment. This provided a stable base for the

creation of a future design driven strategy. The issues we identified were as follow:

+ High reliability compare to competitors (highest accuracy)

– No brand building when distributed through private label

+ Strong R&D

– Little marketing budget

+ Unique technology

– Problems with distributors – Little awareness of the technology and product – Not enough sales – No sustainable sales – High development costs – Little customer insights

Our focus Based on the issues identified, we realised that an overall solution could be to invest a large amount of company’s budget into an adver­ tising campaign that would raise the awareness of the technology, ­product itself as well as the risk of skin cancer in general.

However, this type of solution holds fairly high risk and possible lost capital in case the results would not provide such a high return on investment as anticipated. In addition, it would only be a one time ­solution without any sustainable strategy for the future.

Therefore, after having discussed the possibilities with the CEO himself and after our mapping of the company, we decided to shift our focus on what Intellego does the best: their R&D. Therefore, develop an overall strategy that focuses on Intellego core competences with R&D and customer knowledge as their main differentiation point and ink as their final product.

Rather than struggling to find ways how to reach their customer due to limited marketing budget and unreliable distribution relations, Intellego would become B2B (business to business) company, focusing on being a company that creates value for other companies, mainly to B2C (business to customers) companies.

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A new DDS for Intellego Technologies Ltd.

Methodology Phase 1: Background research

In order to move from the current situation of Intellego and explore future opportunities for expansion, we hold a brainstorming session and created Affinity diagram. We used this method to identify various angles from which we could approach this case. Our main brainstorming question was: “What is interesting in the case of Intellego?”

Firstly, we came up with the statement that it is the ink and the new possibilities of its use that interest us the most. As a result, we brainstormed further to come up with more ideas about where UV radiation can occur, be useful or could be harmful, who could benefit from Intellego technology, who could be the potential users and what are the trends and cultural differences related to UV radiation. We identified seven different areas where Intellego’s ink could be used: Kids

– Government and public health care – Beauty industry

– Food storage and warehouse – Agriculture

– Pets and farm animals

– Reversed problem: when not getting enough sun

The results of our brainstorming encouraged us to see the wider picture of the market and enabled us to seize the opportunities for Intelllego´s R&D. In order to get deeper knowledge about the UV radiation and areas identified, we conducted a secondary research based on the available resources on the internet. While collecting information from different areas, we have focused on user perspective as it is important factor in design-driven innovation and strategy development and implementation.

The main findings from our secondary research were mostly related to the danger of the UV radiation for humans: as we are often reminded, exposure to UV radiation from the sun and other sources, such as solariums, is the major cause of skin cancer (Cancer Council Australia, 2014a). Our skin remembers and records all the UV exposure we have ever received.

However, despite this knowledge, the awareness is still not sufficient as the number of people with skin cancer is growing every year (Skin Cancer UK, 2011).

According to our secondary research, prolonged human exposure to solar UV radiation is leading to premature skin aging, inflammatory health effects on the eye and immune system, but also to freckles and sun spots triggered by sun exposure (Brannon, 2014; WHO, 2014b).

In addition, getting sunburned in childhood or adolescence can increase the risk of melanoma later in life.

The tan a child gets may fade but the damage remains and can lead to a skin cancer later in life. Studies also show that people get most of their sun exposure before the age of 18. Children who are at greater risk are the ones with pale or freckled skin that does not tan or burns before it tans, kids with red or fair hair and blue, green or grey eyes (Irish Cancer Society, 2014).

Moreover, in many countries, Health and Safety Acts require employers to provide and maintain safe working environments, so employers are obliged to ensure safe working environment for the employees, including regulated exposure to UV radiation (Cancer Council Australia, 2014b; TUC, 2014; Skin Cancer Prevention Act in Canada).

Local government is in a unique position to help prevent skin cancer in communities by identifying it as a public health issue, and address sun protection within council policies, strategic plans and statement.

In doing so, local government can ensure communities have access to facilities and services that provide UV protection (SunSmart, 2014).

Furthermore, the exposure of foods to light can result in its deterioration (Clemson University, 2012). Also animals that have naked skin can be sunburned, such as pigs, horses, elephants etc (Gambino,2011).

Trends identified

As a result of our secondary ­ research, we identified ­following trends related to UV radiation: – Within the 27 countries of the EU, the highest malignant melanoma rates are estimated to be in Sweden and Denmark, around 22 cases per 100,000 (WHO, 2012).

– Pediatric melanoma , the most common skin c ­ ancer amongst children, is on the rise (University of Michigan).

– Current parents are more cautious about their children and have more knowledge and education about the danger of risk of skin cancer.

– The rising rate of skin cancer is a major public health issue in many countries (UK, Sweden, Australia, New Zeland etc.).

– Funding of public awareness campaigns by governments, tougher rules on sunbed use (a ban on their use by under-18s, e. g. the Skin Cancer Prevention Act in Canada (Matthews, 2013).

– More and more people tend to follow healthy lifestyle and anti-aging procedures.

As a positive fact, experts believe that four out of five cases of skin cancer could be prevented. Therefore, people should adopt simple precautions that can make all the difference (WHO, 2014a). However people should not avoid sun completely as UV radiation is the best source of vitamin D that helps to develop and maintain healthy bones and muscles. Too little UV exposure can lead to vitamin D deficiency (Harvard School of Public Health, 2014).

Phase 2: Choosing target user perspective After we have evaluated all our ideas and combined them with current raising trends, we decided to put children in focus as they all have more sensitive skin than adults (even those with skin type 6). That is why it is especially crucial for children to practice good

sun-safe habits while they are young to stay sun-safe all their life. We believe that with good sun protection and education from childhood, they can avoid over consumption of UV radiation that can lead to skin

cancer later in life. Concentrating on children could contribute to decreasing number of people with skin cancer in Sweden and could ensure sustainable development of the public health based on prevention.

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A new DDS for Intellego Technologies Ltd.

Methodology Phase 3: Ethnographic research

To understand what the end user actually thinks and wants, we decided to do a Field Visit combined with Video Ethnography. We created a focus group at a kindergarten with five kids in the ages from two to five.

To get the kids to think about being out in the sun we created a mood board including different pictures of sun and beaches, and played some summer music. After a warm up exercise of drawing a summer memory we introduced them to the bracelets.

After pretending that we did not know what it was, we asked children what they thought it could be. The first response was ”something to measure stuff with”. Next guess was a hairband or something to wear on the forehead. Then the oldest kid said ”it looks like a Liseberg bracelet” and put it on her wrist and the other kids followed. Then they instantly started to decorate the bracelets with drawings and pearls.

We then told the kids what the bracelet actually was and how it worked, and then tried to make them come up with something completely different that could do the same thing; indicate when it was time to put on sunscreen or go out of the sun. The children were quite stuck at the bracelets but came up also with earrings and necklaces, glowing pearls and stickers to put on the clothes that changed colour in the sun.

When evaluating the findings we came up with ideas such as selling a kit in toy stores with the bracelets and pens, create a pen with the ink in it to draw on the body or a bracelet and fake tattoos that would change colour. However, we decided not to develop these ideas further since the task with this project is to develop a strategy and keep the organisation focus and not get too product - detailed.

Ethnographic interviews We also did Ethnographic Interviews with the teachers and parents in the kindergarten. They thought that the bracelets were too expensive to be used in the kindergarten. They could neither see a need for it as the kids only were out in the sun for around one hour a day and no one has ever got sunburned there.

Normally, they put on sunscreen and protected the kids with clothes and hats so they could not see the need.

They also thought it was hard to see when the bracelet changed colour because of the lack of contrast in the colours.

Design methods used

The affinity diagram The affinity diagram is a co-designing tool used for gathering and organizing large amounts of datas, ideas and insights (improvementandinnovation.com). The aff­ inity diagrams are especially useful if the situation seems chaotic or if breakthrough thinking rather than incremental improvement is required. An affinity diagram can help clarify broad themes and issues acting on any situation. It often starts with a statement of the problem or the goal.

Ideas are then put on sticky notes which becomes physical instruments to work on their contents, find correlations and identify significant groups of sense. The result is a visual representation describing the first exploration of design solutions (Donald et al., 2000).

Secondary research This is one of 20 design methods chosen by the British Design Council to be part of the ‘Discover’ category. It is used to explore and discover a range of published information about your customers, your competitors and political, social and economic trends (Design Council, 2014). It is vital to understand the context you are working in and stay up to date with the latest developments.

Field Visit This method is used to bring researchers into direct contact with people, places, and things they are studying. This Design Method helps researchers to understand relevant behaviors firsthand (Kumar, 2013).

The field visit emphasizes observation and inquiry about what is being observed and the conversations are guided by simple open-ended questions such as “Can you tell me about what you’re doing?” and “Can you tell me more?” The method is a way to get familiar to users in order to get glimpses of surprising behaviors and insights about unmet needs.

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A new DDS for Intellego Technologies Ltd.

Methodology Findings

By analysing our findings using the design method Observations to Insights and discussing it further, we could see a need for the product for special occasions: Days in the sun – such as boat trips (when you are in the sun for hours but do not really feel it because of the wind), a day in the amusement park or a week on ­ a sun vacation.

We concluded that it is not an everyday use product and that people really do not understand the need for the product that actually could be really helpful for them: not only protecting them from the pain and cancer risk from a sunburn but also relieve them from stress and worries while being exposed to the sun.

From these conclusions our concept started to appear: A concept about partnership and shared value creation to get the product accessible to people by applying Intellego’s most valuable resource – the ink to already existing products.

In order to make this strategy more tangible, we decided to create an example of potential partnership and service offering. Based on our research findings, we chose amusement park Liseberg located in Gothenburg. The main reasoning behind it was the fact that one of the children already saw the relationship between Liseberg’s already existing bracelets and the Smartsun bracelets. In addition, Liseberg is owned by the municipality, therefore it should be in their own interest to protect their citizens.

Limitations To conclude our methodology, we also identify some restrictions that might not allowed us to fully exploit the potential and broad perspective of given task. It is mainly because of the time pressure, wide scope of

design, strategy and innovation, insufficient resources of scientific knowledge and quantitative research to support the conduct of the study as well as due to our subjective assumptions and observations.

It looks like a hospital band.

Kindergarten teacher

We found out interesting information that could be interesting for the company but not relevant to our strategy development: – The bracelets are not designed for kids – They are too long for small wrists – The kids tended to put them the wrong side on, is it easier to stick it on this way?

– They need more glue patches – The glue needs to be stronger – ”Pink would have been nice”

Design methods used

Video Ethnography Video Ethnography is a design method adopted from the field of visual anthropology. It is about documenting people and their activities on film in their own context to reveal insights. This is often used as a complement to the Field Visit. This method is similar to photo ethnography, but has the ability to capture entire periods of time as well as audio recording. When analyzing the film it is important to maintain a log to capture where in the footage the insight was found (Dion, 2007).

Ethnographic Interview This is in close relation to the field visit observational research, Ethnographic Interview is concerned with understanding customers’ experiences from their own perspectives. The interview should be open-ended and exploratory with no scripted questions so the researcher can learn about people through their stories and in their own words. Typically, Ethnographic Interviews are conducted in the actual location or context where the activities that are being discussed occur (Kumar, 2013).

Observations to Insights This Design Method give insights of the learning from what was observed during e.g. a field visit. This method is used to systematically think through all observations and extract valuable insights through a step-by-step walkthrough (Kumar, 2013).

It starts of with mapping out the observations by writing small description of each one of them. Then the insights are documented, described and organized. Finally a group discussion is carried out to refine the findings. Questions like ‘How surprising or non-obvious are these insights?’ and ‘Is more research or validation needed?’ should be considered.

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A new DDS for Intellego Technologies Ltd.

A new design driven strategy Internal Strategy

Our goal for Intellego: to focus on their core competence in R&D and become a knowledge-based company that delivers values to other companies.

Strategy Statement To deliver a technology that allows our partners to offer SunSmart environment* that creates value for their customers.

To focus on the current core competences of the company: their expertise in R&D

To change their focus from: Medical product Holiday product

Definition of SunSmart environment: environment that offers tools and spaces encouraging smart behaviour and protection from the sun in order to ensure safer and more pleasurable experience. This tools include (but are not limited to): UV indicators by Intellego, sheltered areas, information boards about the sun exposure.

Purpose: The Internal strategy was developed in order to help Intellego to follow the new direction proposed as well as to deliver the value of their business for various stakeholders involved: customers, end user and their greater impact on the society in the long run. In order to define the internal strategy, we used a set of tools suggested by Collins & Porras (1996).

Vision

To become a reliable partner that helps other actors to create a SunSmart environment that imp­ roves their customers’ experience by reducing the likelihood of getting sunburned. In the long run, to contribute to raising awareness of the risk of skin cancer and decreas­ing the number of skin cancer cases by providing technology that supports its prevention.

Mission

Delivering reliable technology that makes UV exposure visible to the user.

Core values

– Reliable and accessible partner – Unique R&D competences – Deliver SunSmart experience

BHAG

Become known for providing tools for SunSmart behaviour: To become a pioneer in the tech­ nology about UV measurement and visualization...To partner up with other companies that can turn this technology into products and services that create value for their customers...to help them to create a SunSmart environment….to prevent the occurrence of sunburns...to reduce the number of skin cancer cases...to make the words ‘sun smart environment’ a widely used and understood terminology...to deliver a toolkit that help their part­ ners to communicate the SunSmart behaviour to their customers...

5 whys method

SunSmartenvironment: environment with reduced risk of getting sunburned.

Why is that important?

Allows our partner to create safer and better environment for their customers.

Why is that important?

Provide better experience for their customers.

Why is that important?

Improve customers’ perception of the brand Why is that important?

Initiates brand loyalty Why is that important?

Increases the likelihood that customers will return

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A new DDS for Intellego Technologies Ltd.

A new design driven strategy External strategy

New business model – co-creation of value

Knowledge + Technology

Profit will be generated through contractual partnership with established companies that can use the UV measuring technology to create value for their target customers. Intellego would operate as a B2B company delivering value to B2C companies.

Brand

Intellego

partner

Market knowledge

Instead of developing new products, the proposed ­initial strategy would be to incorporate the UV measuring technology (the ink) into already existing products of the partner’s company that consumers are already familiar with.

Examples of the partners that would benefit from inserting ink into bracelets they already use include:

Customer insight

end user

- Amusement parks SunSmart environment

- Hotel resorts - Holiday providers

New production chain

Transport

INK production

New Product

Intellego

production

R&D

Ink knowledge

Product development

New service as a part of strategy Provide the contractual partners with toolkit (customers insights & advisory and R&D) that will allow them to turn ­Intellego’s technology into a product that creates value for their customers.

Excisting product

partner

Quality control

Value Creating Service

end user

Deliver + communication

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A new DDS for Intellego Technologies Ltd.

Our proposed strategy: envisioned Storyboard

This method was used to create a tangible and concrete example of the new service proposed for Intellego’s current biggest target user: kids. Departing from the findings from our ethnographic research, we choose kids and a reference object that are already familiar with: the Liseberg bracelet. Therefore we used the storyboard to illustrate the concept “A safe day in Liseberg” from user perspective. It illustrates how can the Intellego technology be incorporated to Liseberg’s current service offering in order to improve user’s experience by providing a SunSmart environment.

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A new DDS for Intellego Technologies Ltd.

Our proposed strategy: envisioned Offering map

The offering map was used as the initial tool in order to obtain overall understanding of our service offering to its stakeholders. In addition, it was used to visualize the value creation from Intellego to end user through their partners.

Intellego

Partner (Liseberg)

Access to new technology

Make it accessible for end-users

– Reliable partner

– SunSmart environment

– Ink

– Better experience

– Knowledge

– Lower risk of sunburn

– Service toolkit

– More care free behavior

– Customer insights

– More fun in the sun

– Improved product

– Making UV-exposure visible

– New service

–E ncouraging SunSmart behaviour

– New ideas – Responible behaviour – New values – PR – Differentiation point – Increased brand value – Greater social innovation

+ Value for Liseberg – CSR

Service design methods used

END USER: Staff + visitors

Storyboard (Vertelney & Curtis, 1990) is a represen­ tation tool based on the cinematographic principles. It consist of series of pictures in a narrative sequence showing the relationship between the individual touchpoints and the users in the creation of the final experience.

Offering Map (Sangiorgi, 2004) is an envisioning tool that describes what the proposed service offers to its user. It can be used to further develop the service idea and specific solutions, implement the concept as well as communicate the service to its final user or stakeholders involved.

– Employee friendly – Safer working environment – Customer loyalty – Happy customers – Awareness of the effects of UV-radiation

Evidencing (Moggridge, 2006) also known as the “archeology of the future”, is a method that takes the proposed ideas and animate them as a tangible evidence of the future service.

It involves creating objects showing how will the service feel and work through its touchpoints.

Tomorrow Headline (IDEO, 2002) is a method consisting of fictional articles or headlines allowing designers to envision the impact of their service on the society in the long run. It ­allows them to visualize the idea and make it more tangible and real for the stakeholders involved.

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A new DDS for Intellego Technologies Ltd.

Reflections

In our opinion, strategy making is an attempt to plan the unforeseeable future. We believe that having well formulated and identified core values is crucial as well as flexibility of the strategy to adapt to changing environment. In this report, we have been more focusing on strategy with a customer focus, finding the company´s unique competitive resources and core values for a successful future.

Design, Strategy and Innovation seems to be in close connection to each other. Some of the definitions of the different areas even match. We in the NYMB group are proposing Design Driven Strategy (DDS) as a result of using different methods (some of them ­identified as design methods) in the process. A DDS never settles, it reinvents itself over and over in order to fit to current conditions and changing needs. The DDS process can, in many ways, be compared to the design process. Is this way of constructing a strategy considered to be more successful? Is it a way to visualize thoughts to get a common understanding and thereby move a step closer to radical innovation?

We believe that the specific contribution of design is in value creation through new experiences and opportunities, then by developing people-focused brand experiences and arranging brand touch points. Design driven strategy should be based on “doing design” what for us means use design to visualize the strategy as strategy is something what people do, it´s not just a model, but also the context.

We would like to emphasize that design strategy should be able to incorporate the concept of corporate culture based on competing more effectively by looking at “soft” values such as customer service and

relations rather than “hard” values as price and profit.

Design as strategy should be able to build the identity of the organization by visualizing beliefs, attitudes, philosophy and values of the organization. Organizations should combine design thinking with business thinking in order to create more profitable sustainable organizations serving people’s needs. Their goal should be to come up with proactive and innovative suggestion and solutions.

Design strategy could generate new products that balance the needs of individuals and of society as a whole, new ideas that tackle the global challenges of health, environment and education; new strategies that will result in differences and will have positive effect on human behaviour.

In our group process, using design methods was definitely a good way of co-creating. We visualized every step so that everyone could follow easily. To us, this was a very successful way of sharing thoughts as a complement to words. We believe these methods kept the work running smoothly. If there were some “bumps” in our process, it may have been the unrest an open task that this entails.

The most surprising outcome came from the ethnographic research in the kindergarten. We were not sure if we would get anything out of it to begin with.

But after analysing the material, we were amazed how much insights we gained, mainly about the children’s’ interaction with the product we would have never realized ourselves.

Last, but maybe most important lesson learned: never underestimate the power of sticky notes!