Design Thinking for Innovation

by University of Virginia

Instructor:  Daniela Sangineto

Student:  Ruben Soria  matthew72@hotmail.com

Course Assignment - Mind Mapping – Integrating Solutions

Note:  The following is a true story with many of the details made generic in order to preserve privacy.

Challenge

Our firm recently acquired a technology company (TC) that built a suite of tools and services that serves  a niche market, opening up a new market for our firm.  Within that market, our firm has another  business unit (BU) that serves a segment of that niche market with a set of tools and services (some  similar and some exclusive), but within a smaller segmentation of that market.  I was selected to be part  of a team of 6 to evaluate the newly acquired TC to determine if there were tools and/or services that  could be integrated into the BU offering.  Goals include:

1. Keeping the various systems nimble.   2. Proving the efficacy of the front-end data reporting for existing business.  3. Exploring the feasibility of pursuing a larger segment of the market.

Selection

We conducted a dozen interviews with various stakeholders across both business units and other  technology experts.  We collected a large amount of data from those interviews, and chose as our  primary tool Mind Mapping to help aggregate and identify themes in the data.

Application

Each team member individually took notes from those interviews.  We then identified key terms and  themes from each interview and wrote them on sticky notes.  The team reconvened in a room with a  large white board and we drew a grid with 4 quadrants.  The top two quadrants were goals which were  separated by quotes/defining words and thoughts/beliefs.  The bottom two quadrants were pain points  separated by actions/behaviors and feelings/emotions.

Insight

Several themes and insights emerged:

  Data aggregation was a common pain point theme for the BU, but a strength for the TC.

  Reconciliation and entity accounting was a pain point for the BU, but a strength for the TC.

  Onboarding complexity, resources and time required was a pain point for the TC, but a strength  for the BU.

  Inflexibility of componentizing was a pain point for TC, but a strength for the BU.

  We also discovered there was very little overlap of market segments.

From these themes we were able to develop two primary hypotheses for testing:

  Work with the technology team to integrate both units into a shared platform to expand tools  and services available to the BU.  The BU could then pick the best of breed solutions.

  Develop an integrated sales team to cross sell offerings from both units.

Approach

The Mind Mapping process was extremely effective and helpful.  It allowed us to quickly narrow down  the ideas and develop hypotheses for testing.  Additionally, it would be helpful to explore the learning  launch method further to develop some prototypes.  Developing some quick and inexpensive prototype  ideas would help with evaluating our hypotheses without committing large resources.

