Innovation

Inspire products and services that enrich people’s lives through our innovation-oriented solutions: opportunity mapping, co-creation and strategic foresight. 

Opportunity mapping

In today’s business environment, identifying opportunities that resonate with consumers while ensuring long-term success is a critical challenge. Many companies struggle to find these hidden gems, often chasing fleeting trends and missing the mark. In an increasingly competitive landscape, opportunity mapping and more focused white space analysis are essential first steps. These processes involve developing a clearly defined innovation roadmap, driven by a deep understanding of your consumers. 

 We support you with opportunity mapping and white space analysis by: 

  • Combining human and cultural insights: We tailor insights to the specific innovation horizon you’re targeting. For opportunities close to your current offering, we focus on human insights (today). If you’re looking to reinvent your offering, we leverage cultural insights (of tomorrow). 
  • Ensuring you solve the right human needs: We make you fall in love with the problem to address challenges that truly matter to people; a process which can be fueled by our AI infused Insight Reframing Canvas. 
  • Evaluating market potential: We assess the size of the opportunity with market and value analysis to guide your strategic decisions. Our AI market pulse tool aids in analyzing competitive product launches and reverse-engineering solutions into problem statements and emerging trends. 

Co-creation

Faced with a relentless pressure to innovate, teams often fall into an ‘echo chamber,’ recycling similar ideas. And even when blessed with great ideas, turning them into reality without fully realizing their potential can lead to new products and services falling flat. 

Our co-creation approach breaks this cycle by incorporating diverse perspectives – both human and AI – into ideation, prototyping, testing and concept optimization 

Here’s an overview of the diverse voices we co-create with:  

  • 90-9-1 consumers: For certain innovation challenges gathering feedback is crucial, while others require creative input and out-of-the-box ideas. We connect you with the right people for the right task at the right time. It’s a formula we call 90-9-1. Click here to find out more. 
  • Internal stakeholders: We also work closely with your internal stakeholders through workshops, consumer connects and immersive experiences to make sure insights gain the traction they deserve. 
  • AI integration:
  1.  We leverage the Insight (re)Framing AI Canvas to uncover the deeper meaning of insights and challenge assumptions. 
  2. Through the ‘Unexpected Ideation Canvas’, we combine human creativity with generative AI in ideation. 
  3. We accelerate concept writing and concept optimization with our ‘Concept Optimization canvas’. 

 Our co-creation approach leverages these diverse perspectives to come to great ideas and transform them into impactful products and services. 

 

Strategic foresight

We all need to think about the future if we want a role in creating it. But to feel confident in the decisions we are making today, we need to have a point of view on the kind of future we want to be part of creating. This is where strategic foresight comes in. 

Our in-house cultural, creative and foresight consultancy, Space Doctors, helps you: 

  • Explore the evolving cultural context that is shaping future​ needs and desires 
  • Challenge your assumptions to reimagine what’s possible  
  • Identify our ‘preferred future’ so you can create innovations that help us get there

Understanding the future involves different approaches:  

  • Projective approach: Based on what we can see happening today. By analyzing today’s data, demographics, trends, and expert insights, we forecast the big cultural and social shifts that will shape your business. 
  • Imaginative approach: Based on what we have the capacity to imagine. It’s about asking ourselves what kind of future we want to create. Using creativity, speculation, provocation and imagination we help you explore different possible futures to identify the future you would like to be part of creating. 

Most future-related questions require a blend of both approaches. Projective methods alone might lack new perspectives, while imaginative techniques on their own might feel disconnected from current challenges. Therefore, we combine the most effective techniques to address your specific needs, underpinned by robust cultural insight and cultural understanding

 

What can we do for you?

Find out more.