“Sticks’n'Sushi is able to optimise processes of development using co-creation, but this makes demands on the organisa- tion: we have to bring the right resources into play at the right time, which means involving more employees, cutting across the traditional organisational diagram,” concluded Kim Rahbek, the Director of Sticks’n'Sushi, after the company management had taken part in a Copenhagen Co’creation workshop.

Co-creation has been identified as one of the business strategies of the future, improving effectiveness and knowledge sharing and thus cutting down on the use of resources and consumption in general. During Copenhagen Coʼcreation: Designing for Change 09, more than 250 Danish and foreign companies, designers and experts in innovation concluded that there is a huge potential in using co-creation as a business strategy for innovation. As a pilot project, Copenhagen Coʼcreation invited management teams from Sticks’n'Sushi, ME-FA and KPMG to work for a day on how each company could use co-creation to translate knowledge and skills into new products and solutions and improved work processes. One of the aims of Copenhagen Coʼcreation is to spread the knowledge about co-creation gained during the international meeting in August 2009 to Danish companies.

Sticks’n'Sushi took part in a one-day workshop on 3 December 2009 – and when we asked Kim Rahbek afterwards what his company gained from working with co-creation, he stressed that he sees great potential in it in terms of processes of development within Sticks’n'Sushi.

On 3 December 2009, SticksʼnʼSushi took part in a Copenhagen Coʼcreation Workshop. Kim Rahbek, SticksʼnʼSushi (left) with Mikael Hallstrup and Niels Clausen-Stuck, Designit, who ran the workshop.

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The collaboration between IIT Mumbai and IIT Chicago featured Chicago students directing research in Powai, and IIT Mumbai students directing research in Chicago. As a result, research approaches were tailored to each group of students’ needs. IIT Mumbai students focused on physical product design solutions and IIT Chicago focused on designing systems and strategies encompassing combinations of product, communication and service design opportunities. The goal of all of the projects was to contribute to increasing prosperity and small business growth within Chicago and the Powai neighborhood.

Key insights and design ideas derived from the collaboration

Exploring the possibility of for-profit and not-for-profit hybrids

Students explored the creation of for-profit/not-for-profit hybrid organizations by designing systems that:

• Strengthen communities by connecting local resources
  A self-sustaining business model for a Balwadi that integrates a non-for-profit community service provider, a for-profit entity and an educational incubator around the core values of creating social and economic value for the Powai slum community.
  (Gauri Verma, Valerie Campbell, Edwin Steinmetz , Vishwesh Kelkar)

• Empowering Self-employed Women in Powai through Social Networking
  A Kitty-Cooperative model for women’s groups in the Powai slum designed make NGOs more effective in addressing the needs of their constituents in the areas of health, education and financial independence.
  (Bhumi Gajjar, Soham Patel, Anshul Maheshwari)

Utilization of Ubiquitous or Predominant Technologies

Record-keeping and Credit Management Systems for Kirana Stores in Powai. New paper ledgers and record-keeping applications for mobile phones address preponderance of credit-based transactions, unclear payback details, and shop owner’s monopoly of the main register in stores. (Antonio Quinones, Nai-Hwa Chiang, Preethi Lakshminarayanan, Swapnil Jadhav)

Exploring New Types of Currency

Efficient Scrap Collection Systems for Powai Slums A scrap collection system that offers increased efficiency and profitability to Powai scrap collectors by facilitating networking, scrap processing, price transparency and the introduction of incentives. (Vasile Bora, Dan Folwaczny, Kyungsun Kim, Shilpa Rao, Amy Sprague)

The full paper was presented on April 7, 2009 at SDSE 2008, Bangkok Thailand.

20091123_092213_Sustainability_and_a_Global_Design_Process.pdf

The Danish company, Novozymes, known for its bio-innovations, used co-creation as a method to redesign its traditional campaign strategy. One-way communication was replaced by communication based on dialogue. Using co-creation, the company has created a virtual community, in which more than 10,000 people all over the world are involved in creating the campaign and keeping it alive.

Consumer behaviour
A company like Novozymes that produces enzymes for use in industrial processes (primarily detergents) has to be very well informed about human behaviour. So well informed, in fact, that they are totally familiar with our eating habits and how we wash our clothes. For example, a connection has been made between the new ‘light’ products that grace our dining tables and new kinds of stains that appear on our clothes.

”What it’s all about is that Novozymes have developed enzymes to wash clothes clean even at 30 degrees Celsius. And when we lower the temperature on the washing machine we save energy and CO2– without having to alter our habits. This is one of the easy choices people can make in their daily lives, and at the same time have a positive influence on the environment. These days we cooperate on innovation with those of our customers who produce detergents and who possess a wide knowledge of the needs and wishes of consumers. In the future, when sustainability will be a decisive factor in terms of innovation and finding new solutions, we shall have to understand to an even greater extent at what point along the value chain it is important to make a special effort to make our daily lives more sustainable, and to understand how we can contribute to this. This is why we have adopted an approach to innovation based on the value chain,” explains Mette Johnsen. (more…)

The Danish company, Grundfos, a giant in the field of pumps, has re-thought its approach to developing talent and creating results through co-creation.

A global talent machine
A practical example of how Grundfos uses co-creation is their new talent programme.
”One of the major challenges that we constantly face at Grundfos is how to train and develop a staff of over 18,000 people in more than 50 countries. We have come a long way with training the broad mass of our employees, but on top of that we now also need to be world class at developing the very best of them, those with real talent. We badly need the best people because we have designed a very ambitious strategy with a vision that aims to develop radically innovative products and solutions”, explains Lisbet Thyge Frandsen.

To meet the challenge of designing a concept for developing talent that can be used all over the world, Grundfos has chosen to develop the concept as a co-creation project.

”We had to act quickly and it had to work all over the world. And because it will affect a very large number of people, I felt it important to develop a concept that that they all could relate to. So, to ensure that the concept had local roots and was culturally broad in scope, we gathered a group of 40 managers and specialists from 23 countries who were all passionately interested in the task and prominent in terms of forming public opinion in their local environment. This was a very diverse group and they were given four days to design a new concept for talent development”, adds Lisbet Thyge Frandsen. (more…)

The headline is a quote from Allan Chochinov’s foreword to Emily Pilloton’s book ‘Design Revolution: 100 Products That Empower People’ and very precisely frames what the book is about and what it aims to demonstrate. In it’s full length the quote goes “(…) designers would do well to remember that they are not in the artifact business. They are in the consequence business”.

Through her own introduction ‘Design Can Change the World’ and the book’s more than 100 examples from the real world, Emily Pilloton illustrates co-creation as a basis for social entrepreneurship through design and how designing for sustainability (for people, planet and profit) transforms challenges into opportunities.

“Design has been disconnected from reality”, Emily Pilloton says and through Project H Design, founded in January 2008 by Emily herself, she strives to re-establish the connection based on the bold (and somewhat beautiful) statement that design is problem solving with grace and foresight. One of the keys to re-establish the connection is to not just consider HOW we design stuff (as most ‘green design’ is about) but to carefully consider WHAT we design, and use design as a catalyst to create solutions that go beyond doing no harm.

Even though, HOW we design is an important issue to Emily Pilloton and the best introduction to the principles of Project H Design might as well be her own as can be seen here. (more…)

Elephant Team
Elephant Strategy + Design is a strategic design and innovation consultancy that partners with organizations to transform them into dynamic, profitable and meaningful entities. During the past 20 years, design at Elephant has evolved from a styling exercise to a sophisticated, key driver of innovation.

At Elephant we firmly believe that contemporary design requires a strong convergence of multiple disciplines. With approximately 65 professionals, Team Elephant comprises of business strategists, design thinkers, communication experts, engineers and social science experts working together in multidisciplinary teams to enhance clients’ businesses.

What was the need?
The need was felt on two fronts.

The first front was the way in which the whole design profession is seen. Design has always been considered an intuitive profession where the individuals’ creativity determines the success or failure of a particular design project. Designers traditionally view any kind of system or process for designing as something that is detrimental to their work and profession.

The second front was to systemize the design process of Elephant. Elephant Strategy + Design has been growing at a brisk pace. The number of projects, diversity of projects and number of designers have been growing continuously. With this growth, we needed a strong system that would help us not only to maintain excellence in design output but also to reduce rework, reduce redundancies, make use of the accumulated knowledge and most importantly democratize and decentralize the decision-making. The issues that were before us were as follows:

• How do we formally capture the amorphous design process and use it to provide our clients the best design solutions on a sustainable basis?
• How can our capability yield better productivity?
• How do we improve design productivity?
• How can our environment support continuous improvement of the design process?
• How does our design environment have early predictors of success / failure?
  

(more…)

A new nature of innovation is emerging and reshaping public policy.

In the innovation economy the individual is being placed at the focus of innovation. This is a fact that not only companies but also policy makers must face. Today you need to involve citizens and businesses in the co-creation of new public policies and services to create relevant solutions and to reap the benefits of innovation.

Realizing this, the Danish Enterprise and Construction Authority has taken policy making a step further by bringing it into the new age of social media. The Authority has launched a new online platform which gives the public a chance to co-create the future Danish design policy.

The online platform allows citizens, organizations and businesses to suggest ideas for the policy as part of the Authority’s review of the current design policy. The platform is open to anyone who wants to have their say on the future design policy.

To kick off the discussions on this site we have asked design institutions, design experts and companies to formulate which challenges they find most important. Everybody can participate by commenting on the challenges or by presenting ideas of how to solve the challenges.

The first part of the project runs until the end of October 2009. In this part we collect ideas and comments from the platform. Afterwards selected themes will be further discussed to formulate input to the future Danish design policy.

We would like to invite all of you to take part in the process, and if you feel inspired share your ideas or comments on www.policydesignthinking.com.

We hope that many will join and help us co-create the future Danish design policy.