Client type: Industrial Manufacturing
My delivery: 2 Full days of training and practical exercises
Impact: Trained team is currently running their own workshops, acting as innovation ambassadors
A company specializing in connectivity components recognized the need for more efficient new product development. To tackle this challenge, they hired an in-company Design Thinking training program consisting of eight modules, with me teaching the Research and Problem Framing modules.
The diverse group of participants came from different teams, each with their own unique challenges. The company wanted the training to teach the DT process while providing real-world applications to real challenges. Due to time and budget constraints, research and prototyping had to be completed within the program’s timeframe. This resulted in a somewhat disjointed briefing and required me to package the workshop outputs for subsequent instructors.
Students also pointed out a strong engineering organizational culture that favored the waterfall model and had low tolerance for mistakes. To overcome this, we focused the training on a simple yet powerful premise – innovation projects are about gradually reducing uncertainties. We used simple exercises that emphasized thinking over method, such as using the Empathy Map as a checklist to understand the customer’s context.
To bridge the gap between the training and the real world, we created moments that simulated real-world scenarios. This allowed participants to see the potential challenges they might face in the future, such as other people wanting to join their projects or leaders struggling to wait for results.
By centering the training on a simple yet powerful premise, we were able to provide a practical program that focused on real-world applications. The participants understood how to gradually reduce uncertainties in their innovation projects without feeling constrained by specific techniques. The training helped the company overcome their challenges and create more efficient new product development processes. They were able to move beyond the limitations of their engineering organizational culture and adopt a more flexible approach to innovation.