Report from the Field: Thoughts on Designing your Business

There are some common themes from the buzz generated at yesterday's BIF workshop Designing your Business: Creating a Compelling Consumer Experience . Hosted by BIF Research Advisor Harry West and his firm, Design Continuum, our diverse group of attendees from the public and private sector included students, consultants, service providers, manufacturers, and healthcare providers. At the end of the day, we all left pondering both the importance of 'design thinking' in creating compelling experiences and how we can individually apply it to our daily lives.

First, a big hats off to Harry West and the folks from Design Continuum. While most of us had an inkling of what design thinking is all about (doesn't hurt that it's on the lips of every would-be innovator), there was little expectation for how West and his team would be teaching the process, nor that it would be through such hands-on experiential learning.

What did participants take away from the workshop? Here's a report from the field:

Bill Fay of CVS writes

I went in with no idea as to what we would be doing. Being from central Massachusetts, I"m not that familiar with Providence, so everything was fresh and of interest to me - the narrow sidewalks, the funky storefronts, the profanity-spewing construction dudes - well, they were fresh. On a more serious note, I liked the challenge of working with people I've never met in order to perform specific tasks in a very short period of time. The way we jelled as a team after our first store visit and the passionate discussions that followed are elements I will always remember. I learned to look at the everyday, seemingly-mundane functions - like paying for goods and services - as opportunity for improvement. My biggest challenge now is how I can inject the thought processes we used yesterday into my everyday life - at work and at home.

Larry Quick of New Commons says

The event was very timely and an excellent reminder of the importance of quality design thinking in business, and the greater impact on RI and the region’s success. The session also reinforced the potential for design thinking to be applied to a range of problems and opportunities outside of business – I imagined design thinking applied to other critical issues like the ecology, housing, poverty, economic development, education and government. Just imagine if we could bring the design minds in the room to these types of issues – WOW!!

Katharine Flynn of RIEDC says

Before I started the day I hadn't really considered that something as mundane as the payment or check out experience at a store could be such a big reflection on the overall brand of the store. The more we dug in the more I realized that consumers' positive and negative experiences aren't merely around product but really are around the whole experience from start to finish. Businesses need to focus less on innovative new products and more on innovative new consumer experiences and service. This will be the big differentiator between brands going forward.