Apply the Full Power of Design Thinking with Sprintbase

 
 

Apply the Full Power of Design Thinking with Sprintbase

Accurately, consistently, and repeatedly apply design thinking to business challenges—no design expertise required. Dan Parkinson, Commercial Director from Sprintbase, and Jenny Whitener, CEO of Bridge Innovate, discussed in our latest webinar how organizations are leveraging Sprintbase to achieve new outcomes, build capability, and change cultures on a daily basis.

December 20, 2021

It’s no secret people have mixed feelings about design thinking. According to Gartner’s hype cycle, we’re only now beginning to recover from being disillusioned with design thinking. As organizations began to adopt design thinking trends from 1999-2015, we learned that it can be a fairly complex process. People started distancing themselves from the discipline because they weren’t seeing distinct business outcomes due to confusion over whether it’s for everyday practitioners or reserved for design experts only. 

To set the record straight, design thinkers are anyone with an end-user in mind. In Dan’s experience, design thinkers are found everywhere; they are marketeers, accountants, scientists, salespeople, engineers, and administrators. However you feel about design thinking, those who work hard to follow its disciplines, practices, and mindsets closely are, by association, more optimistic, experimental, open-minded, and human-centered—qualities today's customers reward.

Organizations are increasingly aware that value-chain disruption is simply a reality of the current age. In order to capitalize, they need design thinkers from within to pay attention to their end-users’ needs, not just brainstorm based on perceived needs. That’s why leaders are turning to Sprintbase to develop design-thinking teams and individuals. 

THE INNOVATIVE AGILITY OF SPRINTBASE

Sprintbase is a platform for repeatable and guided design thinking projects, bringing together people and teams regardless of their proficiency. Users have access to a number of sprint types and all the tools and guidance that participants would normally have within a facilitated sprint, allowing them to apply what they’ve learned to projects beyond the original assignment. 

Dan highlights three key aspects of the platform that make Sprintbase unique:

  1. Guided facilitation: A structured process leads to faster implementation and testing. 

  2. Cycles of performance: Develop agility in your team with adaptive levels of support. 

  3. Team & Participant Performance Analytics: Facilitators use data to quickly check-in with each team member.

Bridge was an early adopter of Sprintbase and uses it to power the Digital Studio for facilitated remote teamwork. Jenny and the Bridge team have come to rely on the speed, collaboration, and value Sprintbase offers clients. All the steps are laid out for users, and teams have the ability to collaborate while meeting via any video conferencing solution. For Bridge, this has meant full-time collaboration with a guided process, enabling speed that allows a quick launchpoint for innovation. We’re such huge fans of Sprintbase that we’ve actually created multiple versions of Sprintbase, adapting it to our consulting work in design thinking, strategy, and foresight. 

Similarly, Shaw Industries—a Bridge Innovate client—not only uses Sprintbase for design-thinking sprints, but has now launched Foresight Scouts, a Bridge cohort program specifically designed to identify disruptions and explore implications for the business. 

A REAL SPRINTBASE STORY

Each year, UK-based charity Make Some Noise breaks records on their appeal day when their partner radio stations raise money for projects supporting young people and their families living with illness, disability, or lack of opportunity. During the pandemic, engagement and donations began dropping sharply. To address this, the CTO of Global, the largest commercial radio company in the UK, the company that Make Some Noise sits under, sent his high potential leaders to a leading Executive Education school to apply design thinking to the challenge. Their task was to encourage people who connect with Global through non-radio channels to donate to the charity with as much or more enthusiasm than the traditional listening audience. 

5 teams of 4-5 participants followed the 3-step design thinking sprint offered stock on Sprintbase. And throughout the month of March, 2021, a professional consultant facilitated four 2-hour workshops using Zoom and Sprintbase. Each session concluded with clear tasks for individuals and teams to complete before the next session using the workspace, templates, and guidance provided by Sprintbase. After conducting and collecting interview observations from donors, the team adjusted their challenge from how to get audiences excited about supporting Make Some Noise, to how to support the local charities that Make Some Noise gives to in telling their story. With the ability to now have a richer brainstorm, the group came up with hundreds of ideas, one of them an interactive map where people can identify charities that are local to them. 

By resisting the urge to jump into ideation and instead following a guided process of understanding the end-user’s needs, these design thinkers were able to offer a desirable concept that is now creating value. If you’re not convinced by this success story, Bridge is offering a 30-minute Digital Studio Test Drive on January 7th for anyone who wants to explore launching Sprintbase at their company. Save your free spot!

The Inspire Series fosters connection and learning by celebrating stories of innovation, strategy, leadership, and change. Experience the power of collective wisdom: sign up for our next webinar.

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