Design & foresight, a way forward.

What now? This question has been asked both personally and professionally multiple times throughout 2020 and now into 2021 by everyone. As the continued consequences of the corona virus impacts us, our healthcare sector and with it brings the economic burdens of its mitigation through lockdowns and freezes. During this time companies might focus on short term goals and may decrease their commitments to innovate. [1] One third of companies analyzed by DI expects to cut their investments in research and development. [2] And thousands of people have been laid off across different industries within Denmark.

Companies big and small have been left to themselves to answer the question, “What do we do now?”

However, the problem might not be solely in the question, but the fact that companies have not been asking the question on a continuous basis. We assume that the world is stable and predictable. But just because something worked in the past does not mean that it will in the future. Traditional approaches to strategy and laying out a plan assume tomorrow will be the same as yesterday.

Past crises like the Financial Crisis of 2007–2008 and today’s coronavirus pandemic continuously prove otherwise. And for companies’ instability does not come only from global crises. It also comes from globalization, new technologies, market disruptors, and even the latest trend.

Focused on optimization, daily operations, or selling more leads companies to be fixated on numbers and bottom lines as opposed to thinking about investing in their future.

According to DI’s 2020 yearly report the number of companies investing in research and development has fallen by a quarter from 2009 to 2017. [2] The implications are that innovation has become more concentrated within fewer and larger companies. While development within these innovative companies has stagnated. [2]

The coronavirus has brought this to light as companies big and small are forced to think creatively to tackle their situation in a global pandemic. [1] These rapid shifts of change; crises, technological, or market illustrate the need to be able to adapt and have an accelerated product development process. This changes the questions companies are asking themselves like which channel should we use to extend our reach? Or how can we make this product more desirable? To questions like: What should our next innovation be? Or in what alternative ways should we improve this product or service? And hence what should our and our customers future look like?

Examining innovation and product development processes during this time is more important than ever. Some small and medium sized companies have benefited from our lives being increasing digitalized, from e-learning, virtual conferencing, and e-commerce. While for other companies a strategy of waiting and seeing or hoping that the crisis will pass and everything will go back to normal ignores the fact that customer needs shift, new competitors may have entered the market, and identifying and taking advantage of any new opportunities may be lost. Along with it post crisis growth. SMBs will need to begin to think creatively, innovate, and experiment with new concepts as a few Aarhus businesses and others have already begun to do. [3]

In January KH Marie and Aarhus Teater released a virtual reality concert described as a sensual experience during a time of understimulated senses.

Left: Fra koncerten (fotograf Anders Witt) Right: KH Marie tester VR-versionen. Images from Aarhus Teater’s website

Amazon has created a service platform of virtual experiences described as ‘an interactive livestreaming service that allows you to learn, shop, and discover new places right from your computer.’

In doing this companies minimize risk and accelerate product development processes which are critical now and for the future of innovation within Danish SMBs.

Luckily, there are companies succeeding in their innovations and product developments to look to and learn from. According to McKinsey those companies that are able to integrate design and strategy perform the best. [4] And Danish companies are calling for the need to combine the disciplines of strategy, design, and technology to deliver digital products and services at speed. [5]

However, companies within Denmark are still failing at integrating design and strategy, although they may use design thinking or methods from design thinking. [6] And companies believe that they are not taking objective decisions on for example what new products to develop or which new sectors to enter. [4] That means companies are lacking direction in what their new innovations should be. At the same time many companies never included a user and half never conducted user research before generating ideas or specifications. [4] Meaning that companies lacked insights and never tested, refined, or validated their product ideas.

Instead of making a plan to maintain status quo or scale for more of the same. Companies will have to look to how they can get a better sense of the future by searching for signals of change today. Integrate those into the design process to spark new speculative product concepts or improve existing ones. And explore and test these product alternatives to provide clarity and direction on which product will be most likely to be successful and what improvements would need to be made.

By doing this companies can shift the focus to innovative initiatives and have a continuous product development process. This research project will investigate a practicable model and methods integrating design and foresight. Giving them the ability to adapt to changing environments, experiment, learn and have a better chance of being successful in the future.

[1]Jordan Bar Am, Laura Furstenthal, Felicitas Jorge, and Erik Roth, “Innovation in a crisis: Why it is more critical than ever” June 2020, McKinsey.com

[2] Morten Granzau Nielsen, Mette Juul Jensen, Mette Fomsgaard Nyrup, Henrik Schramm Rasmussen, Nicolaj Nyholm,Jacob Bræstrup, Belle Djerberg, Sofie Laurentzius Nielsen, Marie Holst, Morten Munch Jespersen og Thomas Qvortrup Christensen, “Danmark Tilbage Til Fremtiden” Sept 2020, Dansk Industri

[3] Sofie Øgård Gøttler, ”Nedlukning 2.0 har fået aarhusianske forretningsdrivende til at tænke kreativ” Lokalavisen

[4]Fabricio Dore, Garen Kouyoumjian, Hugo Sarrazin, and Benedict Sheppard, “The business value of design,” October 25, 2018, McKinsey.com

[5] Nicolai Bøttkjær ”Fra nul til 100 op under et år,” September 26 2019, Børsen

[6] Charlotte Rønhof, and Christian Bason, “Design Delivers,” November 2016, danskdesigncenter.dk

Photos used by Chris Grafton on Unsplash, Business photo created by fanjianhua on Freepik