Innovating innovation: deliver meaningful experiences in ecosystems

The world is growing ever more complex and is facing huge problems like aging societies, energy scarcity and increasing demand for healthcare. To meet these challenges we require new types of systemic solutions, based on a holistic, integrative and multi-dimensional approach. The good news is that the world is moving towards a knowledge economy, which is a suitable basis for developing the solutions for these challenges (Brand & Rocchi, 2011). Yet this in itself presents a new issue; we have to learn to design in a different way, creating ecosystems of interconnected products, services and solutions that can be accessed wherever and whenever users desire. These ecosystems need to offer a meaningful, relevant and coherent experience for the end-user. However, it is no longer possible for a company (or one part of it) to understand all facets of these ecosystems, let alone create meaningful experiences for end-users. In addition, it is evident that these experiences will be delivered by different players, such as businesses, governmental organizations and NGOs. No single entity has all the answers. We therefore need to work towards co-creation. At Philips Design we are in the process of changing our way of working to support this process. We believe that innovation is inherently driven by true collaboration from the onset, and that design thinking is a suitable methodology for facilitating this process. You could say we are innovating innovation, by not only focusing on new ideas, which is the focus of a lot of current innovation literature, but also by developing new ways of working as well as new competences at the same time. With this publication we aim to share the progress we have made so far, stimulate the debate on developing new ways of working and inspire third parties to join us on this journey.