Service Design Thinking for the “Wolpertinger Challenge,” or “About Mythical Creatures and Innovation Processes.”
Part 2
Client Arno Klamminger (Head of Center for Mobility Systems, AIT): “Innovation plays a key role at AIT, Austria’s biggest non-university research organisation. BusinessMind professionally supported me and my team to deliver an interactive, creative innovation workshop filled to the brim with exciting methods.”
Welcome back to the 2nd part of the blog article about the common wolpertinger.
Do you remember?
Last week we encountered one at a 2-day innovation workshop with the AIT Center for Mobility Systems. Afterwards I told you here about how we went about using Service Design on the 1st day – the “Exploration Day“ – presented the existing competencies, defined common values and created PERSONAS and discussed with experts in the fishbowl.
Today we continue with the 2nd day.
The 2nd day – the “Creation Day” – started with a short atmospheric picture of the 1st day and explaining the brainstorming rules and framework:
– Out-of-the-box thinking
– All ideas are welcome, in particular WILD IDEAS!
– Build upon the ideas of others
– Don’t judge!
– No limits
– No killer phrases
– No “Yes, but…”
– Quantity instead of quality
And then led on, step by step, to the creativity mode.
- Beginning with the question: “What sorts of things can you get up to with a unicycle?”
- via “What if AIT were, e.g., Parship, MIT, Google, etc.?” (both questions are recommended to achieve a change in perspective, which in turn encourages thinking out of the box)
- through to – yes, just that – thinking out of the box / brainstorming ideas
- and new research breakthroughs/products/services
- and … possible new customers.
The many ideas were collected (quantity over quality!) clustered and prioritised. Then, one of the ideas from each group was applied to the PERSONAS, for which every group in turn created a prototype. You can see one such prototype in the photo below. The main point is to creatively represent a possible new product/service. I was totally fascinated how little time it took to do this – often even devised as a short film about the prototypes – ! Hats off!
The 2nd day concluded with a vision for the individual research fields as well as for the center, which was discussed in separate units and visualised. I provided a load of inspirational photos for this part.
And that was it: 2 days full of ideas and interaction in many different constellations.
It never ceases to amaze me again and again how much creativity is locked up in people, and how wonderfully it can be released, especially in mixed group formations.
Special mention and acknowledgement
In conducting this workshop, I was excellently supported by my collaborative partner and – in this case – co-moderator, Ute Gigler from CoachingMoves. Many, many thanks, dear Ute!
And further special thanks to my client, Arno Klamminger, who very trustingly engaged with this process!
The next exciting thing will be to see how the Center’s many ideas and results will ultimately be used. Ideas are signposts, showing the way a journey could take. The many ideas should now be examined further. Some of them could now be adapted in a way to be attractive for existing customers, others for potential new customers.
As Service Design implies a continuous innovation process in mixed teams and hence organisational development, it would be important to use this momentum, and continue working in a similar way and manner across the disciplines.
Here’s to successful implementation – for you, and all other service designers! Should you need me, I’m here to help & support you!
If you have any questions or require more details about what I offer, just drop me a line at: birgit.baumann@businessmind.at.
Best wishes, Birgit
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