One of the biggest misconceptions about innovation is that it must be something new; something that no one has ever done before. Based on my previous work and experience supporting various individuals and organisations, this definition is far from accurate and impacts negatively the potential innovators of this world. This idea reduces the concept of innovation to its fanciest shape and overlooks the most important part about it, the impact it creates for people.
In my role as a design and business specialist, I have worked with multiple organisations from various background and industries to grow and develop new products and services. My work principally focusses on supporting organisations with the integration and application of Design-Thinking principles to businesses, processes and teams.
In my day to day work I have observed and supported the development of innovative ideas and noticed three key dimensions:
Amongst these parameters, empathy remains at the core of innovation. Responding to a person’s challenge requires a certain ability to put yourself in their shoes. This involves trying to understand where there could be friction points in their journey, taking time to formulate the challenge you are trying to solve, and constantly challenging if you are meeting the real needs of your target audience.
Once you have started navigating these needs, comes the practical/ logistical aspects of your solution. Are you developing something that can be made, considering the current technologies available to us? Can it be done at a scale for a large enough audience that will make this solution sustainable?
You have likely understood by now, creating something new is often more complex than it seems, and complexity represents risk. The risks associated with the potential of failure remains the biggest barriers to the development and implementation of truly innovative concepts.
The biggest part of my role is to navigate this complexity while supporting with the development of something desirable from the user’s perspective, feasibly possible from a technology and supply perspective and financially viable from a business perspective. Managing multiple stakeholders needs and challenges can easily become a frustrating task which can lead you to give up, particularly in resource-scarce environments such as startups and SMEs.
The Design-Thinking process offers a toolbox of mindset and methodologies to support the development of new products and services. This toolkit combined with the support of a service design expert will help you navigate the complexity of a user-centric approach and to reduce the risks associated with each stage of product/service development in fast pace and resource scarce environments, connecting human needs with feasible and commercially sustainable solutions.
The iterative framework we are using at Edge Innovation is based on the Design Council’s Double Diamond process which breaks down these stages as follows:
- Discover: Empathise with your target user to understand their challenges.
- Define: Identify, prioritise, and frame the key problems to be addressed.
- Develop: Generate and assess ideas to tackle these challenges.
- Deliver: Build a compelling business case and present your solution.
Whilst we acknowledge that learning about the different tools, mindset and skillset associated with each phase of this process in the training session is a valuable exercise, we know that it can be hard to directly apply them to your own business to fully benefit from this approach.
This is where design coaching can come in handy, as you will benefit from the expertise of a service designer to bring extra capacity and expertise to develop your own solutions. Having delivered 1:1 coaching support to large public and private organisations, small businesses, charities, and community enterprises, I've been able to witness the transformative impact this approach had on the development of products, services and processes throughout the various programmes I have delivered.
Thanks to the Tees Valley Mayor and Combined Authority, Edge Innovation is proud to offer these innovation processes for free to eligible organisations in the Tees Valley area with the ambition to democratise innovation and boost local growth.
This Innovation Training is delivered as part of the Tees Valley Innovation Challenge Programme and made available to up to 36 organisations based in Darlington, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar & Cleveland, and Stockton-on-Tees throughout the length of the programme. Eligible organisations must:
With three cohorts of 12 SMEs each, participants will collaborate and connect through four hands-on training sessions, each three hours long, focusing on the design process stages (discover, define, develop, deliver).
The training has been designed to be accessible regardless of which stage you are currently at, by applying the mindset of learning by doing. Your team (made up of you and 11 other innovative organisations) will be developing a hypothetical product/service together to support practical learning while avoiding confidentiality and Intellectual Property sharing challenges. This will be followed by the coaching, where we will apply the learnings to your own solution, on a 1-to-1 basis.
Cohort #1 which started on the 7th June 2024 and running until the end of July 2024 has been focussing on the development of a service concept to support an aging population. The team had the opportunity to explore the complex needs, challenges and systems around elders and health care professional to develop a concept to support the aging population while they transition into a new stage of life.
Cohort #2 will be delivered from the 16th October 2024 until the end of November 2024, as follows:
Cohort #3 will be delivered from the 15th November until the 20th of December, as follows:
The coaching sessions will be delivered in between the training sessions to help you apply what you learned to your solution, with the support of design and innovation professionals.
Additionally, you will have access to digitalised, guided versions of workshop resources, available for download at any time.
Register your interest here https://bit.ly/DT-TVIC to be a part of our next cohort, and apply Design-Thinking methods to the development of your next big idea!
We hope to see you there!
Melissa Bourseau, Head of Design, Edge Innovation