By: Chuck Frey
For companies desiring organic growth and whose innovation efforts are not yielding the results demanded, using a Strategic Innovation approach using structured tools and methods will produce higher value products, services, systems, and environments that will resonate deeper with people to encourage them to become loyal customers. This approach delivers better solutions that are feasible to build, viable for profit, and desirable to the user.
For companies desiring organic growth and whose innovation efforts are not yielding the results demanded, using a strategic innovation approach using structured tools and methods will produce higher value products, services, systems, and environments that will resonate deeper with people to encourage them to become loyal customers. This approach delivers better solutions that are feasible to build, viable for profit, and desirable to the user.
The education programs in graduate design schools teach a structured set of tools, methods and frameworks that enable its graduates to develop services, systems, environments and products that deliver compelling human experiences.
Through a unique process of qualitative research, rigorous analysis, and creative synthesis of ideas into solution concepts, their graduates are able to deliver business and societal value by:
- Addressing the most complex problems that others cannot or will not
- Solving the right problems
- Qualitative research to understanding human drivers and uncover needs
- Discovering opportunity areas
- Developing new: business models, innovation-oriented partnerships and alliances, processes, product and service offerings and platforms, channel evolutions and customer experiences.
- Integrating creation with strategy for long-term organization growth
- Fostering a culture of inventiveness and experimentation and building organizational support for creative problem solving
- Linking human drivers with social, technical, political, economic and environmental trends
- Delivering sustainable competitive advantage for longer term profit
- Functioning as change-agents to break the status quo and deliver superior market solutions
- Resulting in a “growth strategy” framework.
The abilities of these graduates is based on an innate and educated ability to deal with abstractions and ambiguity that many people do not have the capacity or desire to address. Their abilities allow them to see things that others do not perceive.
These types of professionals possess vital and differentiated human elements and thinking models including:
- Holistic, systematic creation of new value
- Inventiveness
- Visualization
- Adaptivity to ambiguity
- Systemic visioning
- Collaborating in diverse, international teams
- Playfulness, optimism and enthusiastic opportunity definition
- Embrace and thrive in changing things for the better.