13. March 2010 by Aidan.

For some time now Ireland has been marketing herself as an “innovation island”. In particular, the government and Industrial Development Authority (IDA) have highlighted this around the world as they have sought foreign direct investment in Ireland.

This week in particular Government ministers from Ireland have travelled around the world to spend St. Patrick’s Day in countries as diverse as Korea, New Zealand and USA and to take the opportunity to highlight Ireland’s position as a country with an innovative workforce.

So does the Irish government believe this themselves?

Well apparently they do. As the economy in Ireland has suffered the effects of the global recession worst than most, the Irish government has sought the wisdom and thoughts of her citizens and relations to help move Ireland forward. It is a form of National Crowd-sourcing.

Some examples of this include the Global Economic Forum that the Irish government held in Dublin in September 2009 and the Innovation Taskforce that the government established to provide direction into building a smart economy in Ireland, whose report was issued this week. Both were cases where individuals from many different sectors of the Irish community were brought together to discuss Ireland’s future.In addition, there are other ongoing efforts  to harness the brainpower of the innovative among us, including the Your Country, Your Call competition, which is a competition to “ignite your imagination and reward your thinking”.

So maybe all of the promotion of Ireland as an “innovation island” is not just marketing speak. It seems that the Irish Government at least believes that there is something worth tapping into.

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5. November 2009 by Aidan.

I attended the “Designed in Ireland” event in Waterford last night, as part of 2009 Design Week. The event was very well organised by Marcus Notley and his team and was held in the City Library. In addition to poster presentations of the work of many designers in the South East, there were two talks from Sean McNulty of Innovator and Siobhan O’Dwyer of Threesixty.

Sean, MD of Innovator, spoke about the different business landscape in Ireland at the moment and the need for everyone to take their destiny into their own hands and re-evaluate their business model in order to survive and prosper. He argued for the application of Design Thinking to all of our businesses and introduced many of the tools that can be used to implement this. This would be very much in line with what I have been saying for some time also (see Service Design & Innovation Ireland Linkedin Group) and I would be in complete agreement with Sean.

Siobhan, Brand Director of Threesixty, spoke about the future of design and consumer patterns. We have been forced out of our rampant consumption culture by the need to cut back on spending, but even if the money does start to return to our pockets, will we return to the consumption patterns of before. Siobhan believes that we will be much more discerning about our purchases and that we will tend towards purchasing fewer, better designed products. I tend to agree that our buying patterns will be altered significantly. She also spoke about the future of eco and green products and services. Siobhan wrapped up by introducing us to the term “nonsumers” as the future consumers, her term for people who have turned their back on mass disposable consumption. It was a great talk with a lot to think about.

During the evening I also had a long chat with the wonderful Denise Ryan of Fineline Interiors. Denise has worked on some major commercial design projects and in a lesson to all service providers has now expanded her offerings by teaming up with Tony Clayton-Lea to provide bespoke music designed to complement the design and ambiance of your premises. Great example of extending your service offerings.

Overall it was a very enjoyable evening and a great success.  

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4. November 2009 by Aidan.

I attended a breakfast briefing this morning at the Smurfit Business School at UCD, Dublin. The briefing was to introduce a new Executive Education Programme that the school will offer from the end of this month.

The class is titled “Innovate in the Services Sector - Strategy & Skills” and covers the following areas :

• An understanding of what Service Innovation looks like and how methods have been developed to treat it differently than product innovation, along with frameworks to explore opportunities and make your vision a reality.
• An overview of best practice, an understanding of methods and models that work, so you can confidently set an innovation course. If you’re ready we can take the first steps together.
• An innovation-teaming experience where you’ll design or improve a service or “servitise” a product company. This will give you the intuitive grasp of what your teams need, how they’ll function as innovators themselves.

This mornings briefing gave a broad overview of the class and was presented by Keith Finglas and Chris Kurjan from Innovation Delivery. There was a broad mix of people at the briefing and I was surprised by the number from the financial services sector. There was some active discussion and it was good to see the level of interest in this emerging area.  

Here is a link to the details of the class: Innovate in the Services Sector

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24. September 2009 by Aidan.

I have set up a “Service Design & Innovation - Ireland” group on Linkedin.

Here is the overview from the Linkedin page:

There is a growing international reliance on design in the race to develop radically new, innovative, service offerings.
The demands for Service Innovation are highlighting the need for the practical application of Service Design and Product Servitization techniques.
Ireland is well positioned to play a leading role in the world in these areas however there is no cohesive approach being taken in Ireland to ensure that the experts in these fields are working together towards a common goal.
This group offers practitioners and other interested parties the opportunity to connect and start the discussion about how to move this forward and tap into the opportunities that exist today.

I am looking forward to having interested people join this forum with a view to improving Ireland’s overall standing in the areas of service design and innovation, before it’s too late!

Here is a link to the group page. 

Aidan

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20. September 2009 by Aidan.

The term “service” is used everyday is discussions about business activities and performance. At times it can be confusing because of the lack of definition in exactly what is meant by the term “service”. In fact, when discussing service it is very important that the context is understood.

There are two main areas of service that are unique and distinct and need to be understood. One helpful way of considering these are as the “service that you provide” and the “services that you offer”.

The “service you provide” covers the interaction of your business with everyone else. It can be the interaction with your customers primarily, but also with your suppliers and your own employees. Every company provides this service by the very nature of being in business (you sell something and you charge for it, you talk to your customers, etc). Anyone who interacts with your company experiences the “service your provide”. To improve customer satisfaction you need to ensure that the level of service you provide is of high quality, responsive and meets your customers needs. Service Design is increasingly being employed to optimise this process and ensure that your service meets or exceeds customer expectations. Essentially, the provision of this service is a cost for your company however the quality of this service can be a differentiator for your business.

The “services you offer” are completely different. These are closer to the product you sell. Essentially they are value added or essential services that you need to actively provide in order to grow your business. In this case it will often be the customers choice whether or not to choose to purchase your service.  These services are value added for your business and can substantially grow your revenue and develop longer term customer relationships. It is critical that these services are designed from the outset and not just drifted into, this is being addressed by the growing field of servitization.

For many companies there can easily be confusion between the service you provide and the services that you offer. These need to be considered as two separate aspects of service (”service” V’s “services”) and there are emerging design techniques and tools that can optimise both.

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21. August 2009 by Aidan.

In a previous blog I suggested that Service Design could become the next Health & Safety. The point I was trying to make is that you need processes, and ultimately a culture, to harness the creativity and innovation within a business in order to be able to implement innovative services. It’s not innovation if you just had an idea, it only really counts if you implemented changes based on that idea.

I came across an interesting article from Business Week magazine from October 2008 in which Mark Jones and Fran Salamionis state that strategies at the frontier of service design need a blend of creativity and discipline. They offer a good 5 step framework for implementing innovation projects successfully.

One key point they make is that innovation is not just a matter of “aha” moments, it needs a process that takes a disciplined approach to identify and execute the most promising ideas.

The article also links to some great work that Ideo did with 1st Source Bank in Indiana. Here is a link directly to the case study.

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18. August 2009 by Aidan.

There are two key customer elements in Service Design and they are the customer experience and the customer result. In many cases, as Service Designers, we work to optimise both of these.

From a customer experience perspective we design a customer journey, involving multiple touchpoints, that ensures the service provider is providing the customer with an experience that they will at best enjoy and at least tolerate, in order to reach the end point, which is the result. The result may be the completion of a transaction or it may be the culmination of a process that the customer chose to engage in, for example paying your phone bill or having a massage.

In certain circumstances however, the result may not be something that the service provider can guarantee. For example, when a patient visits a doctor, we can design a service that makes the visit as pleasant as possible however we cannot design the result. We have no control over whether the patient leaves the doctors office feeling good or bad, happy or sad. In a way, the visit itself needs to be minimized in the light of the result that the doctor and patient will need to determine.

In sport too, we cannot design the result. That is the job of the team manager and players. (Although I do think that a more thorough design approach to sport performance can improve results- that’s a blog for another day). So from a customers perspective, the result of attending the game is out of the hands of the service provider and cannot easily be designed. Of course, the experience of attending the game is where the service designers can play a huge role. You can be disappointed by the result but still have a great day out.   

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7. August 2009 by Aidan.

It used to be that we all just went along happily doing our job until 5pm and then we left for home. No-one really bothered us as we went about our job.

Then someone somewhere decided that we needed to be told how to do our job safely. The government got on board with enough legislation to make it a full time job and suddenly every medium sized company and above had a Safety Officer. Safety standards and metrics were established to ensure that performance could be measured. There were safety conferences for the safety officer to meet other safety officers and swap stories about safety and the average worker suddenly discovered that we were doing our job all wrong and were lucky to be alive. Over time, the concept of health and safety became embedded into the culture of companies and safety became the responsibility of every employee and not just a Safety officer.

Quality had a similar life-cycle. Again it started with a small number of practitioners and consultants working with companies who were open to the concept of improving the quality of their operations to make themselves more competitive. The position of Quality manager was established and standards and metrics were established and put in place. Eventually it became clear that Quality was everyone’s responsibility and again it became embedded in the culture of companies.   

Now it’s the turn of service innovation and service design. There is an explosion in this area at the moment, both in academic research and in companies with expertise in these areas. Progressive companies are starting to wake up to the benefits of applying proven design and innovation techniques to optimise their service models. There is a lot of discussion about the right language, metrics and standards that need to be applied to this arena. In addition, some companies are now recruiting Directors of Service Design. It’s an exciting time to be involved in this area but it is also just a matter of time before some of these techniques and standards become embedded into the culture of successful companies, which should ultimately benefit the customer and the companies willing to invest in this area.

Posted in Service Desig, innovation, General | 1 Comment »

15. May 2009 by Aidan.

Hilti is one of the world’s leading tool manufacturers who’s motto is “to passionately create enthusiastic customers”.  

As they go about this, they ensure that they are constantly innovating their products and now innovating the services that they offer also.

Hilti has introduced a “Fleet Management” program that allows customers to purchase the capabilities that their tools can deliver rather than having to buy the tools themselves. As Hilti Chairman Dr. Pius Baschera said in a recent interview, their customers can “buy the holes they have to drill instead of the drill”.

Hilti’s history of innovation and close contacts with their customers helped them identify an unmet need. This was that the management of the tools that they sell is not one of their customers core competencies. As a result they developed their Fleet management program to help customers manage their tool fleet.  Under this program the customer does not have to worry about broken or obsolete tools. The customer simply pays Hilti a monthly fee.

This could be a high risk strategy because Hilti is accepting a lot of the risk in this program however they believe that they can do it because of two key factors. One is their belief in the quality of their products and the other is their close direct relationship with their customers. By being in control of everything from the manufacturing of the tools through to the final customer, Hilti can adequately manage the risk that they are taking.

The introduction of the program led to changes in how their Sales and Marketing staff worked. Now, instead of selling tools, their sales people are effectively selling a financial concept. In addition, they had to ensure that their service and logistic operations were running effectively in order to minimise their costs.

The program has been very successful for Hilti to date, with some markets selling 50% of their tools through the Fleet Management program. It is a great example of the servitization of products to enhance value for the customer and for the product manufacturer.

You can read more about it here.

Posted in Servitize, Selling "Services", Customer Service, innovation, General | 1 Comment »

15. April 2009 by Aidan.

The European Commission has launched a public consultation process to get insights on how to best improve the effectiveness of public innovation support mechanisms in the EU.

“The public consultation consists of two online questionnaires : The one asks the beneficiaries of innovation support measures, namely companies , to provide their views on the direction of future innovation support policies and instruments in the EU, while the other invites institutional stakeholders active in the design, funding, implementation, and evaluation of innovation support measures at regional, national and European level to give their opinion on the key issues of better innovation support in Europe. ”

The E.C. hopes to identify which types of support would have most impact on companies’ capacities to innovate. The Commission also seeks to advise member states on how to better focus their innovation support measures.  

The results of the consultation will be summarised in a Commission Staff Working Document scheduled for publication in June 2009.

More details are available on the Commission website.

Submissions must be in by midday on 4th May 2009.

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