Design thinking for innovation

Final assignment – Herman Wang (October 1st 2016)

Challenge:  Describe your challenge, including all relevant information.

The challenge I want to deal with in that paper is to find a way to identify and

implement the right structural improvement initiatives to kill customer experience pain points  within my company.  As many companies, the company I’m working for is trying hard to  become “customer-centric”, and to make the voice of customer the first and main driver for  structural improvement. However, 2 years after the launch of a NPS (Net Promoter Score), a  project that aims to measure customer’s likelihood to recommend the company at moments  of truth of their relationship with the us, we still have difficulties to identify and implement  structural projects that have a genuine impact on customer satisfaction, and thus that  improve the Net Promoter Score.

Selection: In your own words, briefly describe the tool you selected (e.g., what it is and why  you selected it for your challenge -- including any appropriate video lecture references).

The tool I want to use in that case is the learning launch. Learning launch is,

according to me, perfectly suited to the innovation mindset described in our lesson 2. This  approach allows to easily placing small bets quickly instead of placing big bets slowly, and  consequently to scale or table and idea or a project.   The reason why I choose this tool is because I am working in an important insurance  company (more than 50 billion euro of turnover), so each project usually has to be validated  by a bunch of directors and has to respect a lot of Return on Interest standards before to be  officially launched.   Consequently, I am convinced that using learning launch is the most effective way to test  quickly any new idea to kill a customer pain point issued from our NPS feedbacks.

Application: Describe how you applied the tool you selected to your challenge (e.g., what  you did and how the tool was applied effectively or ineffectively).

In order to be as clear as I can, I will replace the learning launch and the other project

associated to my experiment, in the Design Thinking process we talked about during the  course.

•  What is: In that part, we can find the NPS feedbacks we get from the customers in at  several moment of truth of the relationship, allowing us to draw a customer journey  mapping (as it was described in the course).

•  What if: In that part, the company I am working for has a lot of different initiatives, but  I will focus on one only: the hackathon. This technique of brainstorming aims to make  people imagine solution on a specific subject (in that case to kill customers pain  points).

•  What wows: After the hackathon (which lasts 1 month), only 10 ideas were kept, and  there were developed into intensives taskforces, where groups of people from  different departments of the company (in order to break the silos) worked together to  develop prototypes.

•  What works: and this is finally here that learning launch can be placed. In that case  we wanted to test one of our idea: the creation of a consumer consulting board.

A consumer consulting board, as we prototyped it, is a group a customer gathered on an  online platform to who we would submit important decision to get their idea, to prioritize

projects and to approve initiatives. We identified this as a top-notch technique to be really  customer centric, because using customer co-creation at all different steps of a project  ensure the customer-focused aspect of each project.   Therefore a learning launch would help us to see if the project we prototyped was viable and  if customer would play the role they have to play in it.

Insight: Describe the insight you gained from applying the tool you selected to your  challenge (e.g., how an insight affected your thinking about the challenge and about design  thinking more broadly).

The first positive result we get by using this technique: a shorter time to implement

our prototype. Instead of looking for budget and to develop a very complex and heavy  process, we started little by using a free online platform (Swyng) and contacted people to be  part of the consumer consulting board. This way, we were able to officially launch the  consumer consulting board in 1 month (while projects usually take many months to be  launched in the company I’m working). Then, we were happy to notice that we had a huge  engagement from the customer. We had many feedbacks and all of them were useful for  helping us to take decision. We also noticed a higher satisfaction level for customer that took  part in the process than the one that did not.   This result confirms to me the usefulness of asking customer advice at every step of a  project. This convinced me that co-creation with customer is the best way to get solutions  that are customer oriented. Design thinking and co-creation are perfectly working together.

Approach: Describe what you might do differently next time -- applying the same tool you  selected or a different one -- and the reason(s) why.

Learning launch was really suited for that project, and I wouldn’t do it differently.

However, I would even have included customer sooner in the design thinking process.  Instead of including them in the what works part, I think they would have been as useful in  the what wows part.    Anyhow design thinking is a project management technique I find very well adapted to the  kind of problem I have to deal with. Addressing customer’s reasons for dissatisfaction and  trying to implement projects to deal with it are never the same and is difficult. What works for  some customers won’t work for everyone.

