Are you the one genius service designer who will enrich our team with all your skills, competences and personality? Check out the details in the PDF!

Koos is hiring a service designer

And of course, we talked about service design. We showed them how the world is evolving faster than ever and how companies should innovate to stay relevant, or to even drive change themselves. We talked about the service design tools we use and how we apply them for and with our clients. It was an inspiring morning to see all these business students explore the possibilities of design and design thinking.

A little background on their course:

“Innovation is an important topic for many organizations. Nowadays innovation is considered as a much broader topic than in the past. It includes not only new products and services or new production processes. It also applies to many other parts and dimensions of a business: revenue models, interfaces with customers, customer relationships, human resources, etc. In this course we take a broad perspective on innovation. For that reason we use the term “ business innovation”. 

One of the recent developments in the field of innovation management is the rise of design and design thinking. Designing new products, services, experiences and business models is becoming a new competence for many organizations. 

In this course you will have the opportunity to learn about what design and design thinking is and how it can contribute to innovation of businesses.”

The Amsterdam Center for Service Innovation: http://amsi.uva.nl/

We have just emailed our latest news letter, it’s in Dutch only.

Read it here: Service Design Nieuws

Look at banks. For years they have only focused on numbers. Every quarter profits had to be optimized to the max, because they had to be better than the same quarter, a year before. Even better; the numbers had to exceed analysts expectations, only then the real fancy bonuses came within reach. This made sure short term results always triumphed over long term visions and plans. In their ambition for ever growing revenues, banks brought new products to market with ever increasing risk and we all know the end of that story. Banks are meant to facilitate their clients’ finances. Not to be the only ones to make a huge amount of profit.

source of image: Mercedes Benz The best or nothing campaign

To be able to build sustainable businesses, they need to create real value. That’s why service design is so great. Service design makes use of an analytic, methodical process, but combines this with a creative, exploring and customer focused approach. It combines left and right brain thinking. This makes sure your focus will remain on long term value creation, without neglecting short term results. And not only results for your own business, but for all stakeholders involved.

And that’s tough. That requires a change in culture. A culture, where the customer is really king. Where innovation is viewed as a responsibility for the entire company. Where people get the chance to try stuff out, and where they don’t get hanged directly if it does not work. Where management includes creative people and functions like chief experience officer exist.

So businesses that understand:

• that service design is a fantastic process to change the culture within a company…
• that service design a driver for change…
• that it’s time to create real value…