Focused Ideation powered by Design Thinking

“Focused innovation, the wisdom of crowds, knowledge transfer, cross-functional processes and learning by doing”, that’s some of the keyword from the Shift Design and Alfa Laval Focused Ideation powered by Design Thinking workshop.

They shared with us their own experience and went through Alfa Laval’s in-house developed principles of design thinking. They have developed tools and processes that include the employees from different departments in the product development using a focused method.

During the seminar we worked in groups with solving a challenge: to maximize the value proposition for a cooling system for large frozen food warehouses. After a discussion on which value key word to apply on the product my group couldn’t agree, but in the end, we agreed that we disagreed and each presented our own words. Trustworthiness, simplicity and functionality were recurrent.

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In another exercise, we looked at stakeholder perception and how one can develop the product to please different stakeholders as for example end users and contractors. By using the key words from the earlier exercise we focused on one stakeholder at the time and explored what value one can create for them. The concrete result was ideas like: install a light that always shines green when the system works and write a clear note with the phone number that goes directly to a service center.

Halfway through the exercise, we switched groups and got to share our experience and knowledge in a new constellation.
“It is important that you switch groups frequently in a development process, in order to avoid having one person holding the process back”, said Klas Bertilsson.

Patrik Westerlund from Shift Design and Klas Bertilsson from Alfa Laval also talked about how to agree on what issue to solve, before you start with solutions. Otherwise, the following process will surely be unfocused and ineffective. To agree on the issues to solve you first work on the areas of need this includes starting a trend track and a history track.
“It is important to have clearly separated steps and also a delivery after each step.” said Klas Bertilsson from Alfa Laval.

Article by Lisa Renander, Co-founder & CEO, Go Enterprise AB

Workshop leaders

Klas Bertilsson, Alfa Laval
During the past 19 years Klas has developed extensive knowledge within Product Management and Product development, within a global organization. The last 5 years have been a deep dive into the field of creativity and innovation.

Patrik Westerlund, ShiftDesign
Patric is the CEO and industrial designer at Shift Design & Strategy with a background in business development. Patrick has also been involved in VINNOVA-funded industrial research on how to reduce lead time in concept development.

Please share your experience and suggestions by commenting below. Don’t forget to register for next year’s Innovation In Action 2012.

Symposium: Innovation in Action 2011
Innovation Pioneers Team
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