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…)

The Danish government wants to put Denmark high on the list of innovative, knowledge-rich nations. If we are to achieve this we shall have to get moving right away, but the big question is how do we prepare ourselves for growth? A number of Danish companies with a focus on design have obtained positive results by using a new approach to innovation – co-creation. Co-creation means that instead of designing FOR people, you design WITH people.

As we all know, the world is becoming more and more complex. If we are to meet such major challenges as the financial crisis, the environment and climate change, we shall have to collate knowledge from many different fields and apply it in a completely new way. Otherwise we stand to miss the innovation train. Many design-driven companies are already meeting these challenges by using a new form of open innovation, but in general Danish companies and organisations could do much better.

But why co-creation? Co-creation can help stimulate growth. It is all about getting across the idea that diversity creates innovation. You do not move forward by just doing ‘business as usual’, but by constantly challenging yourself. Those companies that manage actively to involve users in the creation of new products tend to hit the jackpot, in the sense that are handed a short cut to knowledge about user behaviour, which makes it easier for them to understand the complexities of the global market. At the same time, co-creation makes its own demands: companies must be able to manage differences and diversity and to let go of controls and habitual patterns of thought. This in turn calls for management backing and the will to change. (more…)