Our client Michael Holm Hansen, the Director of Front-end Innovation Global R & D at Coloplast http://www.coloplast.com/ skyped in from Copenhagen — a bit late in his day. The students had many questions for him about Coloplast, its users, its business model and the type of innovation.
Balder is taking the students through the double diamond model of design which originated with the UK Design Council (from the Design Council Web Site:
Here is Balder’s drawing of the model which is more interesting and useful in that he also notes the difference between the phases — i.e. when you are using convergent and/or divergent thinking.
Balder and Morten structured the project in 4 parts to coincide with the double diamond — so Week 1 was “intro”; Week 2 was Discover; Week 3 was Define; Week 4 was Develop and Week 5: Deliver.
It was interesting to me that the students struggled, as we all do, with getting the problem well defined. They’d been given a very large problem: “How can Coloplast grow its chronic care business?” Their challenge was to take a piece of that problem and to “frame an opportunity” to tackle a problem with a reasonable scope for the time allotted.
For example, here are a few team problem statements as they existed on May 9:
How does Coloplast increase its presence in a dynamic market within a year, while being tech-agnostic in regards to product development?
What process can Coloplast develop to communicate and engage with users, resulting in products and services that profoundly address needs and behaviours?
Week 3 was about zeroing in on the problem definition and Week 4 was about diverging and coming up with as many solutions as possible. One of the techniques that Balder shared was “Bad Ideas”. See if you can generate as many bad ideas as possible — and then watch how the bad ideas morph (potentially) into some interesting ideas full of potential.
Balder is good at reminding the students about what their brains are up to during these various processes — linking back to Morten’s lectures on the creative brain. Great linkages.