Innovation strategy

Don’t wait to transform your mobility business.

Digital transformation may be a buzzword, but that’s because it’s happening right now. Digitalisation has gained momentum every part of society and it’s showing no sign of slowing down. Consumers have high expectations and now it’s for companies to anticipate their digital needs. iO has the expertise and experience your company needs for effective digital transformation.

Today, even innovation and transformation processes are highly subject to innovation and transformation. Uilke Duinstra, innovation strategist at the Utrecht campus of iO, is getting more and more questions from customers like: “We are a mobility company, but we also want to enter the energy market. How do we do that?” or “We are a B2B company, but how do we also become B2C?” More generally, it concerns questions such as “How can we develop relevant new services step by step, without immediately plunging into a multimillion-dollar project we’re not sure will work at all?” These kinds of issues, which show that domains and sectors are increasingly fading, require a new approach to innovation processes.

Innovation: everyone is convinced that it is necessary. Unfortunately, in practice, the process of innovation can sometimes be inefficient, take far too long, cause resentment or simply miss the mark. This is where the Design Sprint can help. This method, developed by Google Ventures, imposes a demandingly tight format and rapid pace on innovation processes. It can be difficult to identify which issues lend themselves perfectly to this method, and which issues benefit from the application of other methods. Thanks to our extensive experience with Design Sprints, at several campuses, iO can guide you through this process with confidence.

Research demonstrates that companies that shape products and services, in a co-creative process with their end users, can benefit from as much as a 32% higher revenue growth than their competitors, over 5 years. It’s little wonder that Design Thinking — a solution-oriented methodology, in which issues are defined directly from listening to the needs of the end user — is gaining ground. Bas van Dun and Dylan Fanego, digital strategy consultant and UX designer at iO, explain: "Sometimes the solution does not lie in the app or website that you initially had in mind".

NFTs, blockchain, Web3, metaverse: it's easy to get lost when dealing with the latest technology trends. It seems like everyone is jumping on the boat of the metaverse — and those who stay behind seem to drown. But is that really the case? And how difficult is it to do anything in the metaverse? Fortunately, our experts know how to get things done.

Many organisations have a firm grasp on the customer journey. They know the touchpoints and how customers move through them. But looking at it in a more in-depth way – how do we optimise processes and customer contact? – is not something many businesses do. Mostly because businesses don’t look at their operations from the customer’s point of view, but only from that of the organisation. The Service Blueprint takes care of that.

Developing new digital products and services in healthcare can take a while. And yet, innovation is very important in this sector where budget cuts are a daily occurrence. How do you develop innovative ideas for healthcare quicker, and test them to create solutions that get to see the light of day? In this article, we give you 7 tips to use straight away.